Revisiting "Tricky When You Least Expect It"

Since writing Tricky When You Least Expect It in June 2010, I've gotten a number of responses offering better solutions to the angle_diff problem. The final version I presented in the original article was this:

angle_diff(Begin, End) ->
   D = End - Begin,
   DA = abs(D),
   case {DA > 180, D > 0} of
      {true, true} -> DA - 360;
      {true, _}    -> 360 - DA;
      _ -> D
   end.

But, maybe surprisingly, this function can be written in two lines:

angle_diff(Begin, End) ->
   (End - Begin + 540) rem 360 - 180.

The key is to shift the difference into the range -180 to 180 before the modulo operation. The "- 180" at the end adjusts it back. One quirk of Erlang is that the modulo operator (rem) gives a negative result if the first value is negative. That's easily fixed by adding 360 to the difference (180 + 360 = 540) to ensure that it's always positive. (Remember that adding 360 to an angle gives the same angle.)

So how did I miss this simpler solution? I got off track by by thinking I needed an absolute value, and things went downhill from there. I'd like to think if I could rewind and re-attempt the problem from scratch, then I'd see the error of my ways, but I suspect I'd miss it the second time, too. And that's what I was getting at when I wrote "Tricky When You Least Expect It": that you never know when it will take some real thought to solve a seemingly simple problem.

(Thanks to Samuel Tardieu, Benjamin Newman, and Greg Rosenblatt, who all sent almost identical solutions.)

permalink April 15, 2011

previously

• Caught-Up with 20 Years of UI Criticism
• If You're Not Gonna Use It, Why Are You Building It?
• Don't Distract New Programmers with OOP
• Exploring Audio Files with Erlang
• Accidental Innovation, Part 3

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