LabVIEW
What is a simplified way to explain a shift register?
Solved!
Peanut 1292 wrote:
describe a shift register
A shift register is a feature of LabVIEW and consists of a pair of horizontally aligned little rectangles that sit on opposite edges of a loop. Both rectangles are decorated with a triangle. The fill color is light yellow and the outline color and triangle color adapts to the datatype. Each part has two connectors, one on the left and one on the right.The left part can be resized downward to expose more terminals.
They are not very smart but have a good memory. A sibling is the feedback node. They are silent, odorless and not flammable. . 😄
Of course there's always the LabVIEW Help:
Shift Registers
Use shift registers when you want to pass values from previous iterations through the loop to the next iteration. A shift register appears as a pair of terminals, shown as follows, directly opposite each other on the vertical sides of the loop border.
The terminal on the right side of the loop contains an up arrow and stores data on the completion of an iteration. LabVIEW transfers the data connected to the right side of the register to the next iteration. After the loop executes, the terminal on the right side of the loop returns the last value stored in the shift register.
I don't really like the description of a shift register "passing values", because that's not really what it does. This description might even give the false impression that data is passed around between memory locations "clogging up the computer" (see the quote here) :D.
If at all possible, a shift register pair operates fully "in-place" and is one of the most efficient ways to keep conditionally changing data around during execution of the code. (Of course once you change e.g. the array size of the data in the shift regsiter, this advantage is lost).
