Why are basic things undocumented

Hi DennisCote ,

DennisCote said:

Why, oh why, does the LTspice Help not document simple things such as the conditional ternary operator

That is a good question. We have had to ask this exact question for a number features. In this case, it looks like oversight at some point in the history of LTspice.

DennisCote said:

I understand there may be proprietary features or functions that are only for use by ADI, and hence undocumented, but surely the correct processing of the ternary operator does not fall into that category. 

And, you just answered the above question. "Certainly" is a strong word that could easily be interpreted as "One must assume". Why? Again, the dev group grapples with this every day. "Hey, look, undocumented feature. Why undocumented? We first must determine, as best as possible without any meta-doc, the reason it is undocumented. In this case, after careful research, it appears to be oversight, from long ago, so we will document it.

DennisCote said:

This operator is supported by LTspice, at least for a behavioral source. It is converted to an equivalent "if" function in the Expanded Netlist.

Pretty cool. We should document this, and will.

DennisCote said:

BTW, it's not a secret since Google's AI knows that LTspice supports the ternary operator even if the LTspice documentation doesn't.

Well, maybe. You are probably not surprised that I (we) sometimes use Google AI to find out about esoteric (undocumented) LTspice features. My hit rate on correct answers is about a coin flip when approaching more abstruse features. Google AI will conveniently reproduce incorrect instructions.

Thanks for pointing out the missing doc on this useful feature.

mike

Hi DennisCote ,

DennisCote said:

Why, oh why, does the LTspice Help not document simple things such as the conditional ternary operator

That is a good question. We have had to ask this exact question for a number features. In this case, it looks like oversight at some point in the history of LTspice.

DennisCote said:

I understand there may be proprietary features or functions that are only for use by ADI, and hence undocumented, but surely the correct processing of the ternary operator does not fall into that category. 

And, you just answered the above question. "Certainly" is a strong word that could easily be interpreted as "One must assume". Why? Again, the dev group grapples with this every day. "Hey, look, undocumented feature. Why undocumented? We first must determine, as best as possible without any meta-doc, the reason it is undocumented. In this case, after careful research, it appears to be oversight, from long ago, so we will document it.

DennisCote said:

This operator is supported by LTspice, at least for a behavioral source. It is converted to an equivalent "if" function in the Expanded Netlist.

Pretty cool. We should document this, and will.

DennisCote said:

BTW, it's not a secret since Google's AI knows that LTspice supports the ternary operator even if the LTspice documentation doesn't.

Well, maybe. You are probably not surprised that I (we) sometimes use Google AI to find out about esoteric (undocumented) LTspice features. My hit rate on correct answers is about a coin flip when approaching more abstruse features. Google AI will conveniently reproduce incorrect instructions.

Thanks for pointing out the missing doc on this useful feature.

mike