Logical question, it's not enought to know LabVIEW, it's necessary intelligence...

[Mark_Yedinak]

Dennis's solution will give you the last 5 random numbers but the order will not be preserved. You would need to use a array subset and a build array to preserve the order of the elements.

[Intaris]

No you don't.  There's a really simple way to do this but I'm not saying.

Shane.

[dan_u]

Hint: look again at post #5...

[Intaris]

Shift register.

[Mark_Yedinak]

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dan_u wrote:

Hint: look again at post #5...

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While that will work after the fact, it will not keep the working array at a fixed sized. For small arrays this isn't an issue but if you will not terminate the loop until a significant number of iterations you could run into memory and performance issues. The split and build could use in place memeory and be more efficient for large arrays.

[dan_u]

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Mark Yedinak wrote:

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dan_u wrote:

Hint: look again at post #5...

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While that will work after the fact, it will not keep the working array at a fixed sized. For small arrays this isn't an issue but if you will not terminate the loop until a significant number of iterations you could run into memory and performance issues. The split and build could use in place memeory and be more efficient for large arrays.

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Rotating an array and replacing array elements are both very efficient methods to manipulate an array. Which of these functions will change the array size? None I guess.

I just wanted to give some directions, not the full solution. Of course the mentioned elements have to be used together with a shift register which has been initialized with an array of the correct size.

[Dennis_Knutson]

Now I think I understand better what the question was.

How about a fixed size queue? That would preserve the size and new numbers would be placed at the end.

[Hornless.Rhino]

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Dennis Knutson wrote:

Now I think I understand better what the question was.

How about a fixed size queue? That would preserve the size and new numbers would be placed at the end.

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A queue is FIFO too, soyou might be onto something there.

Message Edited by Hornless.Rhino on 25-02-2010 11:30 AM

[Dennis_Knutson]

Example of lossy queue. The op did not mention what is supposed to be done to the oldest data.

[DianeS]

The lossy queue is a great solution, Dennis!

It can also be done using the array functions, with a combination of "delete from array" and "insert into array" (after the inital array population -- if the loop iterates fewer than 5 times, you have to account for that too).  You just have to delete and insert the correct elements.  That will preserve the array size, and output a 5-element array containing the last 5 values generated...the final value generated is element 0, the next-to-final element generated is element 1, etc.

I scribbled up a little VI that seems to do the trick.

Message Edited by DianeS on 02-24-2010 06:56 PM

Message Edited by DianeS on 02-24-2010 07:01 PM