Question

I use this function a lot in game/graphics programming.

float slide(float from, float to, float by) {
    float difference = to - from;
    if(difference > by) {
        return from + by;
    } else if(difference < -by) {
        return from - by;
    } else {
        return to;
    }
}

The basic idea is “move towards so-and-so by this much”.

I’ve called it slide because if you call it each frame on something’s position, it appears as sliding with constant speed towards a target position.

Any other suggestions for naming?

Answer 1

I think slide is OK, maybe moveTo or floatTo would be also OK.

And one more idea. when you use this function like this:

Slide(0, 5, 10);

(menaing that “by” is bigger than possible step)

and you’ll call it several times, the object will oscilate around “to” position.

You should add some handling for it. Like:

float slide(float from, float to, float by) {
    float difference = to - from;
    if(difference > by && from + by < to) {
        return from + by;
    } else if(difference < -by && from - by > to) {
        return from - by;
    } else {
        return to;
    }
}

hope this will help.