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From: silvert@cs.dal.ca (Bill Silvert)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.handhelds
Subject: Re: strings on 48
Summary: Flag settings?
Message-ID: <1991May13.144544.6606@cs.dal.ca>
Date: 13 May 91 14:45:44 GMT
References: <1991May11.213329.1322@cs.dal.ca> <22625@shlump.lkg.dec.com>
Sender: silvert@cs.dal.ca.UUCP (Bill Silvert)
Reply-To: silvert%biome@cs.dal.ca
Distribution: na
Organization: Habitat Ecology Div., Bedford Inst. of Oceanography
Lines: 39

In article <22625@shlump.lkg.dec.com> edp@jareth.enet.dec.com (Eric Postpischil (Always mount a scratch monkey.)) writes:
>
>>Is there a way to store strings on the HP48SX without having the system
>>possibly rewriting them?  If I try to store "00-00" in a string variable
>>the system stores "0-0".
>
>The 48 stores strings just fine.  It sounds like you may be entering
>'00-00' instead of "00-00".  The former, using apostrophes, is an
>algebraic object:  zero minus zero.  It is stored internally with tokens
>that represent zero minus zero, and when it is displayed, zero is
>displayed as 0.  The latter is a string; it is stored character by
>character.  Use quotation marks for strings -- the quotation marks are
>blue-shifted on the minus key.

I appreciate all the comments I received by email and by Eric's posting.
As a result I am even more mystified.  I was indeed aware of the
difference between single and double quotes, and inspection of the stack
shows that indeed I was working with double quotes.  However, after
having done some other stuff with string manipulations last night, the
handling of minus signs has changed, and I suspect that perhaps I
changed a flag or something like that.  I cannot recall the exact
commands I used, but basically what happened was that I generated a
string like "F1-00-0123" and stored it, but when I recalled it I got
"F1-0-123".  This was repeatable.  I finally edited the strings to replace
the - signs by _ and stored them that way.   But I just went back,
edited the strings by replacing _ with -, and the strings are OK.

I do not recall exactly how I entered the strings originally.  I think I
just typed them in.  But today when I try to type in a string like this
the - sign gets interpreted as a command, so to include the - signs I
have to create the strings without them, then edit them.

I'll try to pin this down, but if anyone can clarify string handling by
the 48 it might help.
-- 
William Silvert, Habitat Ecology Division, Bedford Inst. of Oceanography
P. O. Box 1006, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, CANADA B2Y 4A2.  Tel. (902)426-1577
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