[Info-vax] DEC Basic and dynamic memory ?

[Simon Clubley]

On 2022-01-30, Dave Froble <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
> On 1/30/2022 7:09 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>> On 2022-01-30, Arne Vajhøj <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>>> On 1/30/2022 6:54 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>>> On 2022-01-29, Arne Vajhøj <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>>>>> In this case Simon outlined a problem where Pascal and C are obvious
>>>>> languages and me with no Basic experience wrote some Basic code - that
>>>>> is almost ensure an "unsual style". Or to put it another way: I am
>>>>> (or was) a Fortran programmer and Fortran programmers can program
>>>>> in Fortran in any language.  :-)
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for the demo program Arne.
>>>>
>>>> The approach you are forced to use in DEC Basic is way more ugly than
>>>> doing it in C or Pascal.
>>>
>>> Ugly or just unfamiliar?
>>>
>>
>> Ugly because of all the tree management stuff you have to do for
>> yourself that you get for free in C or Pascal.
>>
>> In addition, there's the overhead of copying the tree everytime
>> you run out of allocated spare space and need to extend it.
>
> Bullshit!  Just not true.
>

Arne's example makes it very clear that when you run out of spare nodes
in your backing storage in DEC Basic, and hence have to grow the backing
storage by the growth increment, you have to do a copy of the existing data.

How would you grow the existing backing storage without either you or
the DEC Basic RTL doing a copy of the existing data when you extend it
by the growth increment ?

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.