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Hi Jay, John, bowerbird, and others

     Since I am still awaiting FB^3  (french version of
release 4), here are some innocent ruminations on the
relation to FB2 of Jay's last FB^3 code demo.  Maybe they're
of interest to others besides me and bowerbird.

Jay stated

 > Date: Thu, 22 Feb 01 23:50:01 -0600
 > ...

 > I have assumed you are using FB^3. This would have to be
 > done with peeks in FBII. I have not tested this, but I am
 > fairly confident of the logic.

I agree for ZBasic in place of FBII.  But to me it seems
FB2(=FBII) or FB1 is almost adequate syntactically except
for the following few points unrelated to peek and poke.

I will write

<your FB^3 code>
 <==
<conjectural FB2 equivalent>


(0)
dim gTransDateArray(1000) as str15
...
dim as ptr oldPtr,testPtr,newPtr
DIM @ dateRec.14
dim as str15 oldDate, newDate
 <==
dim 15 gTransDateArray$(1000)
...
dim oldPtr,testPtr,newPtr 
   '' *and* set default variable type to LONG
DIM dateRec.14 '' ??
dim 15 oldDate$, newDate$
(and consequent substitutions)


(1)
while testPtr.0` = 10 
 <==
while len(testPtr.0$) = 10 



(2)
increment = sizeof(gTransDateArray(0))
 <==
increment = 16


(3)
call DateToSeconds (dateRec,gNewestDate&)
 <== 
????????? something using:
CALL IUDATEPSTRING(Long ,Byte ,Var$ ,Long )	Sel.W =  14	(Trap A9ED)
CALL IUDATESTRING(Long ,Byte ,Var$ )	(Trap A9ED)


(4)
'~'6 
 <==
??


(5)
testPtr  += increment
 <==
testPtr=testPtr+increment

 -------------------

Comments?

Question: Could not fast and clear FB2 syntax be *almost
identical* to fast and clear FB^3 syntax? 

That would be soothing to anyone with a lot of
FB2 code or experience and just a little time
for programming.

Cheers

Larry S.


PS. John wrote:

 > I was thinking a day or so ago, how incredibly stable
 > FB^3 is compared with FB2. Maybe I do less things that
 > might cause my program to bomb the system...

Since I have been fooling recently with miniapps in FB2, I
am willing to confirm that FB2 tends to get your project
rumpled when FB2 is running in the background and your newly
compiled and autonomous app crashes.  Often the compiler is
then "sick" and crash-prone until you clean/reinitialize the
project in ways that I am just learning by experience.
Except for such "environmental sickness" FB2 has been great
(and, by memory, faster then CW).