In text based language, define some constants with meaningful names are very common task. For example, you typically define constant in C like this:
#define RED 1
#define GREEN 2
#define BLUE 3
In LabVIEW, you can use ring to define them:
and then you can use the constant very simple:
But the following definition can not be implemented with ring:
#define RED 1
#define GREEN 2
#define BLUE 3
#define DEFAULT 1
Here, DEFAULT is the same with RED. But this is not permitted by ring, it will popup a warning if you try to do this: "Waring: Identical values in the Values list are not permitted. The oblject cannot be updated until you assign new values or remove items with identical values. "
I know you can use local or global varibles to define constant as a work around, but variables have performance overhead, it is not the best solution as a result.
I propose to create a "const" that allow different items share the same value, and the other behaviours will be the same as a ring. You can also add "picture const" and "text & picture const".
The following topic on NI discussion forums inspires me to propose this idea.
http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=170&thread.id=435687
