Closing Orders question

Could someone please explain the following code and whether this is the best way to write this For instance why is the for loop different when dealing with open orders and pending orders I am not sure why cnt is set to OrdersTotal()-1 in the first loop

Also why is there a return(0) after the order has been closed/deleted Is it not possible to issue all the closures whilst in the loop

Many thanks

for(cnt=OrdersTotal()-1;cnt>=0;cnt--)
{
if (OrderSelect(cnt, SELECT_BY_POS, MODE_TRADES))
{
mode=OrderType();
if ((OrderSymbol()==Symbol() && OrderMagicNumber() == MagicNumber) || AllSymbolsProtect)
{
if (mode==OP_BUY || mode==OP_SELL)
{
OrderClose(OrderTicket(),OrderLots(),OrderClosePrice(),slippage,ArrowsColor);
return(0);
}
}
}
}

for(cnt=0;cnt<OrdersTotal();cnt++)
{
if (OrderSelect(cnt, SELECT_BY_POS, MODE_TRADES))
{
mode=OrderType();
if ((OrderSymbol()==Symbol() && OrderMagicNumber() == MagicNumber) || AllSymbolsProtect)
{
if (mode==OP_SELLLIMIT || mode==OP_BUYLIMIT || mode==OP_BUYSTOP || mode==OP_SELLSTOP)
{
OrderDelete(OrderTicket());
return(0);
}
}
}
}

Programmers do things in many different ways and for mysterious reasons. Some are good and some are mysterious to everyone but the programmer him/herself. This is a case of the latter. The loop control for the open orders is OK, because MT4 has an index for orders from 0 to OrdersTotal internally. This is not to be confused with the ticket number.


You could certainly deal with both open and pending orders in one loop if you wanted to, but there may have been some reason for not doing this.

I don't understand the reason for the return(0) in the loop unless it is to ensure only one order is closed per call.

My rule is these situations is to leave the code alone if it is working satisfactorily. If not, I delete the code and start from scratch and rewrite in the way I think it should be.

The code looks like it's closing the oldest open order,which is why you see it's starting from OrdersTotal-1, and it's deleting the most recent pending order. I would imagine that this is part of the strategy of the EA.

Lux

hey theorem..... someone might have many open orders and many pending orders with a burning need to close them all....

if we are running something that has a totalprofit or maxloss function, we are more than likely going to deal with the money first, which would be the open buys and sells....... it takes time to close orders and time is money, as they say..... once that is all settled, we can move on to the pending orders....


there is nothing worse than to finally have that 5$ total profit target hit and to have to watch 200 pending orders being deleted first.....

i want my hard earned 5 bucks now.... pending orders just have to wait their turn.....h

I believe the oldest order is numbered 0 but I haven't checked this lately. So the code is closing the newest order first.

Hi,
when dealing with closing/deleting more than one orders in a loop, you have to use cnt=orderstotal()-1 to 0. this is to make sure all orders get closed in one loop. if you use cnt = 0 to orderstotal()-1, some orders will remain open. this is because after closing order, MT4 will reindex all remaining orders.

suppose there are 3 orders, these 3 orders have index 0, 1, 2

for(cnt=0 to 2) orderstotal-1 = 3-1 = 2
at cnt = 0, order with index 0 will be selected and closed, and MT4 will reindex the remaining orders, so there are 2 orders left, will have index 0, 1

for(cnt=1 to 1) orderstotal-1 = 2-1 = 1
at cnt = 1, order with index 1 will be selected and closed, and MT4 will reindex the remaining orders, there is only one orders left, will have index 0

for(cnt=2 to 0) orderstotal-1 = 1-1 = 0
this stage won't be executed, so there is one orders left open

to open and delete in one loop
for(cnt=OrdersTotal()-1;cnt>=0;cnt--)
{
if (OrderSelect(cnt, SELECT_BY_POS, MODE_TRADES))
{
mode=OrderType();
if ((OrderSymbol()==Symbol() && OrderMagicNumber() == MagicNumber) || AllSymbolsProtect)
{
if (mode<=OP_SELL)
{
OrderClose(OrderTicket(),OrderLots(),OrderClosePrice(),slippage,ArrowsColor);
}
else
{
OrderDelete(OrderTicket());
}
}
}
}

Maybe that explains the return(0) after each closure/deletion Checking the original EA I see that both of the for loops are called after each successive tick until all orders are dealt with As the loop is reinitailised each time I guess both methods should work OK Seems however that this EA has not been coded very well however and I was confused that for some reason a new tick was needed between order closures

That reply was incorrect.

Arrays in MT4 are indexed starting at 0 so if you actually want to access the (oldest) first order placed (most recent order is index 0) it's the total of orders minus 1. No magic or mystery just simple maths.


Lux