Range not behaving as expected - page 2

The lookback limit works very well for me in MT5 to limit the number of bars drawn by the custom indicator and save resources. However, when a new chart is downloading new data, I can sometimes witness garbled data appearing past bar 1000, which was never filled in by the custom indicator. I know that the indicator didn't fill in those values, as it never looked past 1000 bars, and it cancels if it cannot access any price data yet (downloading a new chart). Where does the garbled data come from? Of course, I found an easy way to fix this, which was to fill all 50,000 bars on the chart with EMPTY_VALUE. That solves the problem. The fix looks like this:

   if (prev_calculated==0) for (j=0; j<rates_total; j++) indicatorBuffer[j]=EMPTY_VALUE;

This works, and is fast because it only has to loop once on the first tick, or only a few times when new data is being downloaded to a new chart. However, it looks a bit messy and has to loop 50,000 bars, or even 500,000 if that many are on the chart. Is there a nicer, cleaner solution for this?

1. >Yes it did. It filled them when there were less than 1K bars on chart. Then newer history came in. Now there are 2K bars with values in the older part.

   Always set buffer values, do not assume that they are empty values.

     while(iBar > 0){  --iBar;
        buffer[iBar] = EMPTY_VALUE;
        :

2. I never liked those arbitrary look back limits. I use the attached file to process as many bars as possible in 1.5 seconds and then continue periodically(either by time or by tick,) until all bars are done.
   

Is there a nicer, cleaner solution for this?

Yes, there is a cleaner (and extremely faster) solution to do that, and without using a loop:

   if(prev_calculated == 0) {
      ArrayInitialize(indicatorBuffer,EMPTY_VALUE);
   }

 if(prev_calculated>1) 
    {
    pos=prev_calculated-1;
   }   
 else                     // first bar is bar 0    <=> prev_caculated == 0 
     {
      //--- set first candle
      if(open[0]<close[0])
        {
         ExtLowHighBuffer[0]=low[0];
         ExtHighLowBuffer[0]=high[0];
        }
      else
        {
         ExtLowHighBuffer[0]=high[0];
         ExtHighLowBuffer[0]=low[0];
        }
      ExtOpenBuffer[0]=open[0];
      ExtCloseBuffer[0]=close[0];
      //---
      pos=1;
     }                  //end first bar 0

  // pos == 1 only once, the first time,  then :
  //  pos=prev_calculated-1;   <=> for(i=prev_calculated-1; i<rates_total; i++) ==  main loop 
   // only one bar is recalculated at each tick
//--- main loop of calculations
   for(i=pos; i<rates_total; i++)
     {
      haOpen=(ExtOpenBuffer[i-1]+ExtCloseBuffer[i-1])/2;
      haClose=(open[i]+high[i]+low[i]+close[i])/4;
      haHigh=MathMax(high[i],MathMax(haOpen,haClose));
      haLow=MathMin(low[i],MathMin(haOpen,haClose));
      if(haOpen<haClose)
        {
         ExtLowHighBuffer[i]=haLow;
         ExtHighLowBuffer[i]=haHigh;
        }
      else
        {
         ExtLowHighBuffer[i]=haHigh;
         ExtHighLowBuffer[i]=haLow;
        }
      ExtOpenBuffer[i]=haOpen;
      ExtCloseBuffer[i]=haClose;
     }

now you have your values for HA and if you want to do further caculation you have to use this loop:

for(i=prev_calculated-1; i<rates_total; i++)

i am not sure that ArrayMaximum will work in this case

#14 can be simplified

Regular indicator:   

while(iBar > 0){ --iBar;
   ⋮
}
return rates_total - (iBar + 1); // Redraw iBar.

MTF indicator:

      while(mtf_shift(iBar) == 0)   ++iBar;  // Redraw higher TF bar zero.
      return rates_total - iBar;
///
INDEX    mtf_shift(INDEX iBar){
   return   iBarShift(_Symbol, SourceTF, Time[iBar]);
}