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Newsgroups: alt.lang.basic
Subject: Re: PDS 7.1 and VB for DOS
Keywords: Basic VBDOS

SP>ú  Newsgroup: alt.lang.basic
SP>ú Message-ID: <1992Sep29.233146.14290@microsoft.com>
SP>ú    Subject: PDS 7.1 and VB for DOS

SP>VB/DOS Pro has every language feature that Basic PDS 7.1 with the following
SP>exceptions:
.
.
.
SP>4.  VB/DOS Pro stores string literals (like PRINT "Steve") in FAR MEMORY
SP>when compiled.  Basic PDS stored these in precious dGroup.
.
.
.
SP>6.  VB/DOS, like VB/Win, uses Far Strings only.  The vast majority of all
SP>commercial addon packages already use Far Strings so this should be no
SP>problem for most people.  FWI -- Far Strings allow VB/DOS to use all the
SP>DOS memory your machine has available, near strings are limited to 64K
SP>of total string space.  Far strings have also been highly speed tuned for
SP>real-world code so, in most real (as opposed to contrived benchmarks)
SP>apps, Far strings are at least as fast as near strings.

I can't argue with most of what you've said here, and I have no desire to
bash VBDOS before I've had time to try it out, but this seems a bit
misleading to me.  I have used nothing but far strings for some time, even
to the extent of storing "literals" in a file and reading them into far
strings to keep them out of DGROUP, and I don't get anywhere _near_ my
full memory capacity.  Each far string, unless you have changed this in
VBDOS, has a DGROUP-based handle.  Therefore, you are _still_ limited
by DGROUP even using all far strings.  This may be unavoidable, but people
need to be told.  It is frustrating to hit the DGROUP celeing, check your
far string space, and find you have over 100k left.  It is very _rare_ to
be able to use your full far memory for far strings.  One way to do it is
to use really long strings instead of a lot of short ones.


SP>Thanks, Steve Podradchik, Product Manager, Microsoft VB for MS-DOS



Any chance you could move the far string handles into a block of far
memory?  You could have groups of handles, with DGROUP pointers to each
group instead of each string.  I'm probably missing something . . .

                              -- Ben Bernard --
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