Debugging expressions: how to print value?

[Dan Ebberts]

It depends on the expression. Sometimes you can just apply the same expression to a slider and comment out everything that happens after your variable gets assigned.

Sometimes you can apply your expression to the source text of a text layer, again commenting out everything after the variable is assigned. Using this method though, you might have to modify the expression a little because it’s being applied to a different layer.

If you need help, post your expression and we’ll take a look.

Dan

[Paulo Jan]

Okay, here it goes.

I’m trying to do basically the typewriter effect that I mentioned in my post below: the letters in a text layer appear one by one, and when it reaches an end of line, the text scrolls one line upwards. “Animator 1” and “Range Selector 1” are the animators that I’m using to control the visibility of the letters: the “start” property of the range selector increases through the animation, so that more and more letters are visible in each frame, etc., etc.

Now, my problem is that the scrolling doesn’t always happen exactly when an end-of-line is reached; sometimes there’s a delay of 2 or 3 letters until the text scrolls, and the drift gets more pronounced as you advance through the animation. That’s why I’m trying to view the amount of line breaks that the expressions “sees” in a given moment (stored in “contador”), by printing it in a different text layer called “Monitor”… but it doesn’t work.

contador=0;
currentLetter = Math.ceil(text.animator(“Animator 1”).selector(“Range Selector 1”).start);
for (i=0 ; i < currentLetter; i++) { temp2 = text.sourceText.charAt(i); if (temp2 == '\\r') { contador++; } } thisComp.layer("Monitor").text.sourceText=contador; [position[0], position[1] - (48 * contador)]; (BTW, I know that in line 5 I should be comparing the letter with "backslash r"; this forum seems to strip single backslashes, and if I put double backslashes, it prints both of them). Paulo.

[Dan Ebberts]

Well, the basic problem is that you can’t set the value of another property from an expression. An expression can only affect the property to which it is applied. So…. I would apply a slider to the layer with the expression, and apply this exprssion to the slider:

contador=0;
currentLetter = Math.ceil(text.animator(“Animator 1”).selector(“Range Selector 1”).start);
for (i=0 ; i < currentLetter; i++) { temp2 = text.sourceText.charAt(i); if (temp2 == '\r') { contador++; } } contador Dan