🚀 go-pugleaf

Gareth's Downstairs Computer
<headstone255.but.n...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On 02/06/2018 18:37, Andrew Swallow wrote:
>> On 02/06/2018 18:32, Gareth's Downstairs Computer wrote:
>>> On 02/06/2018 17:26, Andrew Swallow wrote:
>>>> On 02/06/2018 12:27, Gareth's Downstairs Computer wrote:
>>>>> On 02/06/2018 06:44, Charles Richmond wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> On the DEC-20, BASIC Plus 2 had a lot of enhancements to plain 
>>>>>> BASIC. I never used it much, but some I knew at university did 
>>>>>> fairly complex projects using this BASIC.
>>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Yes, but save from some contextual limitations (execution speed,
>>>>> storage space, etc) to a well designed project, the implementation
>>>>> language is irrelevant.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>> If the computer language cannot handle character you soon hit problems.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> All the languages with which I've been involved from the very lowest
>>> to PASCAL and FORTRAN, had an inalienable capability to deal with
>>> all forms of data having binary representations.
>>> 
>>> You don't hit a problem if you need a couple of hours' work to turn in
>>> string handling capabilities; after all, the C language has no string
>>> handling facilities, and relies on a string library, and, usually, a
>>> CHAR data type defined in terms of its binary size and signing.
>>> 
>> 
>> The ICL 1900 read characters into integers in A1 format. IF statements 
>> compared by subtracting which resulted in overflow.
> 
> I know not what is A1 format, but awareness of such a problem makes it 
> seem to be a simple matter to adjust values or else to translate to
> an internal format.
> 
> 

A1 stores input one character per word, so you lose somewhere between 75% 
and 84% of your memory, in return for having something that is a bit easier
to handle. Otherwise you have to shift and mask to manipulate characters.

-- 
Pete