Use a terminal block to access the for loop's data

[tst]

There have been numerous ideas on how to improve the for loop. Some people want more information. Some people want the option to have less. Some people want to be able to move the terminals or hide them altogether.

This suggestion should take care of some of these issues, and open the for loop for future expansion: Let the for loop data be exposed through a terminal block, similar to what event structures have:

This would be resizable in the same way that the event structure node is and would allow you to change the order of terminals. This would also allow NI to add additional loop data without worrying about cluttering the loop for those who don't want it.

Additionally, if NI implemented this idea, then we would also be able to hide this node entirely, which is useful in some cases.

Here are some relevant ideas which would be helped by this idea:

1. http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/Option-to-Show-Hide-the-Iteration-and-Count-Terminals-...
2. http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/Option-to-quot-Dock-quot-the-Iteration-Terminal/idi-p/...
3. http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/Sliding-N-Terminal-on-FOR-Loop-and-or-Progress-Termina...
4. http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/Reverse-Iteration-Terminal-in-For-Loop/idi-p/1174449
5. http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/Progress-Terminal-for-FOR-Loop/idi-p/1236224
6. http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/Diagram-Cleanup-should-not-move-loop-terminals-option/...

[GregSands]

Of course wiring to [i] from the outside could provide an offset to be added to the iteration number. For example if I wire a 5, I'd get "5,6,7,8,9...." on the [i] terminal inside for the first iterations. Just another idea!

Or could it give you "0,5,10,15,..."?

[Wart]

You could have a special terminal.  Something that accepts an int on the input side and outputs a boolean that is true when i%int = 0.  That would make any task that took place repeatedly on every "ith" iteration trivially easy to implement. 

Though having a block with a blue bar and one side and green bar on the other would be odd.