Dukascopy Support Board • View topic - Strategy problem with initiating variables to their default value.

mosu_d

Hi,

Suppose you want to count how many up candles there are in the last 6 historical candles.
You would define a local variable counter and assign 0 to its default value.

You would expect not to get more then 6 candles right?
Wrong.

The counter keeps on counting endlessly.
The Strategy does not initiate the local variable back to its default value at the beginning of each execution. Instead, it keeps on adding to the value of the previous execution.

See for yourself in Default_1.01.vfs

Obviously one could place an Assign block at the beginning of the strategy.
But what is the point of assigning a default value, other than missleade you.

This is simple for a trivial example, but gets chaotic for a bigger strategy.

Cheers,
mosu_d

amine_chourou

Hiya,

Quote:

Suppose you want to count how many up candles there are in the last 6 historical candles.
You would define a local variable counter and assign 0 to its default value.

True

Quote:

You would expect not to get more then 6 candles right?

False as the condition "More than 6 candles" is not defined anywhere. How do you expect a code to execute an instruction that is not defined/declared ?

Quote:

The counter keeps on counting endlessly.

Normal behavior as the counter is incrementing at every candle's event.

Quote:

The Strategy does not initiate the local variable back to its default value at the beginning of each execution. Instead, it keeps on adding to the value of the previous execution.

False, a default value is attributed to a variable at the "OnStart" & "OnStop" methods unless the user assign the default start value within the strategy itself.
In any case, resetting a counter is a matter of 2 blocks : "IF" & "Assign" that's it.

Quote:

This is simple for a trivial example, but gets chaotic for a bigger strategy.

We'll do our best to avoid you chaotic kinematics

Slowly but surely !

Cheers

mosu_d

amine_chourou wrote:

Hiya,

Quote:
Suppose you want to count how many up candles there are in the last 6 historical candles.
You would define a local variable counter and assign 0 to its default value.

True
Quote:
You would expect not to get more then 6 candles right?

False as the condition "More than 6 candles" is not defined anywhere. How do you expect a code to execute an instruction that is not defined/declared ?

Forgive my limited understanding... Let me rephrase so I can understand.

I have 6 apples in a bag, I take them one by one, counting how many Red Apples I have.
I expect not to get more then 6 Red Apples,
regardless how many times I try.

I don't have to place any condition to count less then 6 Apples
Do I have to explain why?
.
.

amine_chourou

Quote:

I expect not to get more then 6 Red Apples,

If an expectation is not specified then the system will not get it: In other words, you need to tell the system what expectation are you waiting for and here comes the condition to define this expectation. A counter is a counter, it just counts till the strategy is stopped or the whole system get crashed. If say : Do: X+1=X the system will keep on summing but if you say

X+1=X and
If X=6
then
Assign 0 to X

Then the system will count till 6 and then back to 0