Converts x and y offsets to a turtle heading in degrees (from 0 to 360).
Note that this version of atan is designed to conform to the geometry of the NetLogo world, where a heading of 0 is straight up, 90 is to the right, and so on clockwise around the circle. (Normally in geometry an angle of 0 is right, 90 is up, and so on, counterclockwise around the circle, and atan would be defined accordingly.)
When y is 0: if x is positive, it reports 90; if x is negative, it reports 270; if x is zero, you get an error.
show atan 1 -1 => 135 show atan -1 1 => 315 crt 1 [ set heading 30 fd 1 print atan xcor ycor ] => 30
In the final example, note that the result of atan
equals the turtle's heading.
If you ever need to convert a turtle heading (obtained with atan or otherwise) to a normal mathematical angle, the following should be helpful:
to-report heading-to-angle [ h ] report (90 - h) mod 360 end
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