An application of clamp

Hey all, I was reading through the manual and came across "clamp" where x is returned if under a value, above a value - or else return x....

I just don't understand why something would require this. It seems like x is chosen every time from the 3 values. Am I misunderstanding the way this is written? Can someone help me with a practical application of clamp?

Suppose you want a sprite to only move horizontally in a set range of x coordinates, a line if you will.

Always sprite set x to clamp(self.x, 10, 100)

That event will make it stay within 10 to 100 x.

If x is less than the lower bound it returns the lower bound, if it's higher than the upper bound then it returns the upper bound and if x is between lower and upper it returns x.

Say you wanted to keep the player health between 0 and 100. You could set

playerHealth = clamp(playerHealth + x, 0, 100)[/code:32whohz9]
where x is could be +50 for a health kit or -25 for an enemy attack and the result will always be between 0 and 100. If playerHealth + x goes above 100 then playerHealth gets set to 100. If it goes below 0 then playerHealth gets set to 0.

Oh, that's pretty neat! Thanks for explaining that newt and ramones !