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From: CDCKAB%EMUVM1.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu ( Karl Brendel)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pascal
Subject: Re:Looking for a cut/paste procedure
Message-ID: <25409@adm.brl.mil>
Date: 7 Jan 91 11:18:36 GMT
Sender: news@adm.brl.mil
Lines: 47

In article <950048@hpclapd.HP.COM>, defaria@hpclapd.hp.com
  (Andy DeFaria) wrote:

[...deleted...]

>One of the problems that I have is that there can  be up to 2000
>characters cut and  TP only likes strings  < 256  characters.
>Another problem is that currently my highlight and cut procedure
>isn't smart enough to  be  able to cut only  what  is highlighted
>and   tends  to  cut  the  same character(s) multiple times.  I know
>that given more time, debugging  and coding I could work through it
>but I would appreciate any  pointers (and/or code)  to help me
>complete this task.

Don't cut to a string: cut to an array of char (or byte or word). (Be
sure to note that the simplest cut (a Move from screen memory to
your array) will pick up the attribute bytes as well as the
character bytes.) The array will not be limited to 255 char.

When pasting, you will have to consider issues related to blanks at
the end of lines (if you are cutting a rectangle from the screen,
and some lines in it are shorter than others, like text with a
ragged right margin) and implicit carriage returns (when text runs
all the way to the right margin), etc.

As for the cutting of characters multiple times, I don't think we
can really give you a clue where you're going wrong without seeing
some code. Perhaps your drag algorithm is off? It seems to me that
you should be picking off an upper left corner and a lower right
corner (begin and end of the drag), then doing some kind of action
that boils down to

        i := 0;
        for y := ytl to ylr do for x := xtl to xlr do
        begin
          buffer[i] := charAt(x,y);
          Inc(i);
        end;

(where you've got an appropriate charAt function).

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| Karl Brendel                           Centers for Disease Control |
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