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From: vrm@blackwater.cerc.wvu.wvnet.edu (Vasile R. Montan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Variable length arrays in Pascal--can it be done?
Message-ID: <1521@babcock.cerc.wvu.wvnet.edu>
Date: 2 Apr 91 23:23:07 GMT
Sender: news@cerc.wvu.wvnet.edu
Reply-To: un020070@vaxa.wvnet.edu
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I want to have variable length arrays in Pascal.  Pascal, however,
does not want me to have variable length arrays in it.  I think I've
figured out a way to do this.  This solution is probably glaringly
obvious to more experienced programmers, but I want to run it
past you to see if there's any reason why it shouldn't work.

Suppose I define a type in Pascal which is an arbitrarily large
array: say, one with 10000 elements in it, or some number larger than
I will ever need.  Suppose I then define a pointer to point to
this type, and a handle to point to the pointer.  Let's say I want
to start out with seven elements in the array, so I use NewHandle
and allocate just enough memory to hold those seven elements.  I
store this number seven in a variable to keep track of how big
the array is.

Now, as long as I am careful not to refer to any elements beyond the
end of the memory block, I should not have any problems, right?
And if I want to resize the array, I can use SetHandleSize,
making sure to keep track of how many elements are now in the array,
right?  Is there any reason why this shouldn't work?

--Kurisuto
un020070@vaxa.wvnet.edu