[fpc-pascal] Strange message about mixed signed expression

[Frederic Da Vitoria]

2014/1/22 waldo kitty <wkitty42 at windstream.net>

> the string type is/was a 256 character array with the 0th (zero-th)
> element containing the length of the string... this allowed one to
> immediately know how many characters to read at once... it was much faster
> than iterating thru the array looking for a nul byte as done in other
> languages...
>
> it was quite innovative at the time and actually lead to the Hudson
> Message Base format being developed by Adam Hudson of QuickBBS fame when he
> was in high school (grades 10-12)... this message base format was the
> greatest thing since sliced bread when it came out and many other BBS
> packages adopted it because of its amazing speed and the large number of
> messages that could be stored with it...
>

What was innovative? Storing the length as byte 0? I believe old Basic had
been doing it for years before. Basic is not a language I like, but still...

-- 
Frederic Da Vitoria
(davitof)

Membre de l'April - « promouvoir et défendre le logiciel libre » -
http://www.april.org
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