Help needed with my Grid EA,

Hey Guys ,

As a novice programmer, starting out , Ive been playing with this grid EA for a few weeks, trying to clear out a few of the features in it that I find are'nt important.

However, Ive now encounted an error message when I try to Compile it.

And I can't for the life of me work out how to fix it,
Its telling me I have "unbalanced Parethisis",

I was just wondering whether any Coding Gurus, may have a sec to have a quick look at it for me.?


Many thanks in advance to anyone who can shed some light on what Ive done.

Marty.

it looks like some code is missing
example below .... if ( ((traderate .. . where is the rest ?
sorry, not sure i can help ...I looked at most of the brackets.



if (( IsPosition(traderate,point*GridSize,true) == false ) && (doit == true)) // test if i have no open orders close to my price: if so, put one on
{
double myStopLoss = 0;
if ( StopLoss > 0 )
{ myStopLoss = traderate-point*StopLoss ; }
if ( traderate > Ask )
{ entermode = OP_BUYSTOP; }
else
{ entermode = OP_BUYLIMIT ; }
if ( ((traderate


}
}
}

Hi martaroony,

What I am about to say may come across as rude, and/or condesending, but I am honestly just trying to help. I am guessing from looking at your code that you are a self taught programmer. That is great, it is good to see you getting out and having a go. It is great to see that you have put plenty of comments in, heaps of experience programmers (me included) are guilty of not doing this, however there are a few things in your style that make it really hard to read, and this would be why you are struggling to debug it. I started to try to neaten it up for you, but it was too much of a mess and would take me a long time... and then I thought, give a man a fish... and all that. So I am going to try to teach you how to fish.

By the way, I am not an MQ4 expert, but I was a programmer for a few years coding in VB, C and C++, and the good style is universal across languages. Everything I am going to go through now is just tips on how to make your code easier to read and update in the future (and debug). It is not a comment on the actual system, or even the coding itself.

1) The first thing I would say is declare all of your variables at the top of the relevant function, rather than as you need them. As with everything I am going to mention here, it will work either way, but at the top makes for more readable code.

2) I am going to paste a chunck of code you had below, then comment on it...
for(int i=totalorders-1;i>=0;i--)
OrderSelect(i, SELECT_BY_POS, MODE_TRADES);
// we use iTime so it works in backtesting

{
if (( MathAbs(iTime(Symbol(),5,0)-OrderOpenTime()) >= xHours*60*60 ) && (iTime(Symbol(),5,0)>0))
{ bool result = false;
//Close opened long position
if ( OrderType() == OP_BUY ) result = OrderClose( OrderTicket(), OrderLots(), MarketInfo(OrderSymbol(), MODE_BID), 5, Red );
//Close opened short position
if ( OrderType() == OP_SELL ) result = OrderClose( OrderTicket(), OrderLots(), MarketInfo(OrderSymbol(), MODE_ASK), 5, Red );
//Close pending order
if ( OrderType() > 1 ) result = OrderDelete( OrderTicket() );
}
}
------------------------------------------------
Ok, where do i start.

3) First of all, since you don't have an open brace directly after the for loop, the only thing that will be in the loop in the OrderSelect statement. I am guessing this is not what you intended (since there is no point in this). As a rule, whenever you ever write a for statement, put a curly brace on the very next line. Even if you only want to loop 1 line. Same goes for while and if statements.

4) Your indentation is all wrong. The way it should be is... everything goes directly under everything else unless you have an if/while/for/case statement. Open curly braces should be inline with THEIR CORRESPONDING closing brace. After the for/while/if/case statement, on the next We will use an open curly brace in line with the above statement. The following line will be indented 1 tab. When we are finished with the for/while/if/case, we close the curly brace in line with the open one (which was inline with the for/while/if/case statement). Obviously if we have nested statements, just follow the same proceedure. Oh, and don't be scared to put some blank lines in where logical. Below is a copy of how I think the above code should look. Have a look and tell me if you don't think it's easier to follow...

if (( MathAbs(iTime(Symbol(),5,0)-OrderOpenTime()) >= xHours*60*60 ) && (iTime(Symbol(),5,0)>0))
{
result = false;

//Close opened long position
if ( OrderType() == OP_BUY )
{
result = OrderClose( OrderTicket(), OrderLots(), MarketInfo(OrderSymbol(), MODE_BID), 5, Red );
}

//Close opened short position
if ( OrderType() == OP_SELL )
{
result = OrderClose( OrderTicket(), OrderLots(), MarketInfo(OrderSymbol(), MODE_ASK), 5, Red );
}

//Close pending order
if ( OrderType() > 1 )
{
result = OrderDelete( OrderTicket() );
}
}
} // proc DeleteAfter()

In doing this, I think I just found one of your problems... You are missing a close curly brace in the DeleteAfter function. I think you will find that once you fix that problem, a raft more will appear. If not complile errors, then the code just won't do what you want it to do. If you don't go through and neaten it up like this, you will have a nightmare debugging, and most people will be fairly reluctant to look at your code to help you (just because it takes an infinite amount more effort to look at messy code).

I hope this helps. If you clean it up, and still can't find the problem, post again, or PM me, and I will have another look. Please post the results of the EA once you get it working, I would love to see how it goes.

Oops, for some reason, the indending didn't work in my last post, and this was a big part of my point. I will try again now, but if it doesn't work again, you will just have to read the description...

for(int i=totalorders-1;i>=0;i--)
{
OrderSelect(i, SELECT_BY_POS, MODE_TRADES);
// we use iTime so it works in backtesting
if (( MathAbs(iTime(Symbol(),5,0)-OrderOpenTime()) >= xHours*60*60 ) && (iTime(Symbol(),5,0)>0))
{
result = false;
//Close opened long position
if ( OrderType() == OP_BUY )
{
result = OrderClose( OrderTicket(), OrderLots(), MarketInfo(OrderSymbol(), MODE_BID), 5, Red );
}

//Close opened short position
if ( OrderType() == OP_SELL )
{
result = OrderClose( OrderTicket(), OrderLots(), MarketInfo(OrderSymbol(), MODE_ASK), 5, Red );
}

//Close pending order
if ( OrderType() > 1 )
{
result = OrderDelete( OrderTicket() );
}
}
}
}

Ok, one more time. I have used dots instead of spaces.

for(int i=totalorders-1;i>=0;i--)
{
...OrderSelect(i, SELECT_BY_POS, MODE_TRADES);
...// we use iTime so it works in backtesting
...if (( MathAbs(iTime(Symbol(),5,0)-OrderOpenTime()) >= xHours*60*60 ) && (iTime(Symbol(),5,0)>0))
...{
......result = false;
......//Close opened long position
......if ( OrderType() == OP_BUY )
......{
.........result = OrderClose( OrderTicket(), OrderLots(), MarketInfo(OrderSymbol(), MODE_BID), 5, Red );
......}

......//Close opened short position
......if ( OrderType() == OP_SELL )
......{
.........result = OrderClose( OrderTicket(), OrderLots(), MarketInfo(OrderSymbol(), MODE_ASK), 5, Red );
......}

......//Close pending order
......if ( OrderType() > 1 )
......{
.........result = OrderDelete( OrderTicket() );
......}
...}
}

Hey Mate Thanks for that Info,

That was a world of information that has just made me realise something.

I firstly should have mentioned , that I took a Grid EA written by someone else and Butchered it, thinking I could alter it to suit myself.

So all of the coding you saw was actually written by someone else, I wanted to clear that up, as I wouldnt like to take any credit for any of it.

The only thing I can take credit for is completely stuffing a perfectly good ,( be it slightly over complicated) , but still working EA.

I most probley out smarted myself , thinking I could just Cut out all the bits I didnt want, Not realising there was more to it than just that.

So I guess im back to square one..

Thanks cre8iveq, I appreciate you helping me realise some of the complexity of coding.

Thanks Mate, Regards Marty.

No worries. If you spend some decent time manually back testing, and can show some good results, I will help you code what you want to do. PM me if you want.

I just sent you a PM, outlining what Im tring to do.

This time Ive started again with a new shell Grid EA, its a lot simpler.

I have attached it incase you want to have a look.

The second EA is a hedge EA that has the particular,

( close all open positions if proft = X % account balance) coding

That Im trying to incorporate into my grid EA.

If you had time, and or could offer some advise it would be great .


Thanks Mate , Marty.