RE: Array efficiency was Dynamic Arrays

[Buck Calabro <Buck.Calabro@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>But you have given a beautiful explanation of PC memory
>management!  -snip- The AS/400 isn't different in this
>regard than any other modern OS.

Aside from the fact that a PC is single user, that is (We were talking about
Visual Basic...)

>So arguing that accessing files should be preferred to
>arrays because of the underlying OS is wrong.

I agree completely.  My poorly made point (James and Scott helped clear it
up) was that trying to second-guess what is in RAM and what is paged out is
not as simple as saying "files are always on disk and arrays are always in
memory."

>I believe that arrays should be used instead
>of temp files when the data being stored is local
>to the program's work.

An excellent point.  I snipped your fine examples to abbreviate my post, but
I do want to add that I *did* end my earlier post with the comment that if
dynamic arrays fit the process at hand (we never did hear the big picture)
then I would not directly tinker the pointers, rather I would wrapper the
dynamic access with functions, and I noted that the iSeries-toolkit happens
to have much of that functionality already.  http://www.iseries-toolkit.org

Nice post James!  Very clear and helpful.
  --buck