Compatibility Issues wish list

[Martin Draper]

Up until now I have never had a problem converting VB. Basically the problems I am having come about with user defined types. Specifically, VB supports Dynamic strings in UDT, objects in VB.NET are basically user defined types as well. The second problem is that you can not return UDT from a function.

So it would be nice to have these features added in the next version, Please

[Michael Mattias]

This is not an official venue for New Feature Suggestions.

Send NFSs to [email protected]

[Tyrone W. Lee]

Use Malloc

You can use a string array or malloc to do this. At minimum you would need a separate function to handle the assignment of the string.

TYPE MYADDRESS
  FirstName as STRING PTR
  LastName as STRING PTR
  Age as INTEGER
END TYPE

GLOBAL MyList() as string

FUNCTION SetString(inText$)
  REDIM PRESERVE MyList(UBOUND(MyList()+1) as GLOBAL STRING

  MyList(UBOUND(MyList()) = inText$

  'Now here you can return the POINTER to the string on the INDEX of the array.
  FUNCTION = UBOUND(MyList())
'  or
  FUNCTION = STRPTR(MyList(UBOUND(MyList()))
END FUNCTION

Sub Main()
   Dim MyUDT as MYADDRESS

   MyUDT.FirstName = SetString("Tony")
   MyUDT.LastName = SetString("Lawrence")
   MyUDT.Age = 33
End Sub

If you use the Index, you can print the name as

PRINT MyList(MyUDT.FirstName)

of you use the pointer:

PRINT [email protected]

Using a Malloc or HeapAlloc will only give you the use of the POINTER option. Arrays give you a little more flexibility and options for sorting and searching.


Also... You can return an UDT from a function. Its just return within the parameter list. (And you can return it from a FUNCTION or a SUB.)

DIM MyUDT(200) as MYADDRESS

Sub Get_MyUDT (index as long, destUDT as MYADDRESS)
  destUDT = MyUDT(index)
End Sub

You can use a FUNCTION to return a LONG value of errors or data type settings regarding the function request. Within VB you would say:

destUDT = Get_MyUDT(index)

in PB, you would accomplish this with the sub/function above and the following call

CALL Get_MyUDT (index, destUDT)
result = Get_MyUDT (index, destUDT) (where result could be error codes etc..)


Hope this helps.


Tye

[Michael Mattias]

If you don't need to spport $NUL characters in your strings, you can use

TYPE myType
  A  AS LONG
  B  AS SINGLE
  sz  [B]AS ASCIIZ *%MAX_LENGTH_I_NEED_TO_SUPPORT[/B]
  ......