[Info-vax] DEC Basic and dynamic memory ?

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 1/31/2022 8:55 AM, Simon Clubley wrote:
> 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 ?

I don't know if it the only way.

But it is one way and it works fine.

Arne