Re: 'first of strings returned from a function should be 1?

[mheaney@ni.net (Matthew Heaney)]

In article <5rg99c$pg1$1@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au>, Dale Stanbrough
<dale@goanna.cs.rmit.EDU.AU> wrote:


>If I selected a field, and wanted to check whether a substring existed...
>
>   if Index (Field (Line, 2, ':'), "xxx") = 0 then
>
>Copying the string (yet again) just to pass it to another function didn't
>seem to make sense. Perhaps I could also write Field as a procedure returning 
>an upper and lower bound to eliminate all copying.

I don't know what you mean either, by "copying the string just to pass it
to another function."  If Field is a function that returns a string, and
you pass it as an argument to another subprogram, on what basis are you
assuming a copy occurs?  Strings (and other arrays and records) are usually
passed by reference.  What's different about your problem?

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Matthew Heaney
Software Development Consultant
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