Swizzling in GLSL

Swizzling

You can access the components of vectors using the following syntax:

vec4 someVec;
someVec.x + someVec.y;

This is called swizzling. You can use x, y, z, or w, referring to the first, second, third, and fourth components, respectively.

The reason it has that name "swizzling" is because the following syntax is entirely valid:

vec2 someVec;
vec4 otherVec = someVec.xyxx;
vec3 thirdVec = otherVec.zyy;

You can use any combination of up to 4 of the letters to create a vector (of the same basic type) of that length. So otherVec.zyy is a vec3, which is how we can initialize a vec3 value with it. Any combination of up to 4 letters is acceptable, so long as the source vector actually has those components. Attempting to access the 'w' component of a vec3 for example is a compile-time error.

Swizzling also works on l-values:

vec4 someVec;
someVec.wzyx = vec4(1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0); // Reverses the order.
someVec.zx = vec2(3.0, 5.0); // Sets the 3rd component of someVec to 3.0 and the 1st component to 5.0

However, when you use a swizzle as a way of setting component values, you cannot use the same swizzle component twice. So someVec.xx = vec2(4.0, 4.0); is not allowed.

Additionally, there are 3 sets of swizzle masks. You can use xyzw, rgba (for colors), or stpq (for texture coordinates). These three sets have no actual difference; they're just syntactic sugar. You cannot combine names from different sets in a single swizzle operation. So ".xrs" is not a valid swizzle mask.

In OpenGL 4.2 or ARB_shading_language_420pack, scalars can be swizzled as well. They obviously only have one source component, but it is legal to do this:

float aFloat;
vec4 someVec = aFloat.xxxx;