Something I never really gave much thought about made me do a bit of a double take today.
If you assign a color literal to a color variable you get what might look like “funny” behaviour when compared to other types of variables.
For instance, if you do
Dim c As Color = &c12345what you get in the color is the color value &c12345000, a right zero fill, instead of &c00012345, a left zero fill.
If however you do something like
Dim i32 As Int32 = &h12345what you get is a 32 bit value that is analogous to &h00012345 and its left zero filled.
So why does a color do a zero fill on the “right” and yet an integer, which is also a 32 bit value, you get what looks like a zero fill on the left ?
I suppose internally the compiler is actually doing something like
Dim i32 As Int32 = Int32 (&h12345)
Dim c As Color = Color(i32)It first converts the &c notation into an Int32 which is then recast as a color and since a color, in hex, is actually AARRGGBB where a color is RRGGBBAA this is why you get the apparent “right zero fill” for a color.
One of those things you just take for granted and never really think about.
Now what got me even thinking about this ? The code editors display of a color literal.
It struck me that IF a color literal was left zero filled like you might assume it would be then this image SHOULD look like this
But, since I assume the compiler is doing the conversion of a color via an Int32. you get LEFT zero filling on the color constant and it shows up the way it does.
One of those things I just never really thought of in all the time I’ve used Xojo.