String "bitmaps"
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Cool article. Thanks for the thoughts.
Thanks for the excuse to go back and look at that again. It's hard to believe that back then I thought that CCustomerCol was a good naming convention. And as for LetXML and GetXML!?!?! :sigh: To this day nobody has ever noticed (or at least admitted noticing) the following: CustCol.Customer(1).Company = "LA" CustCol.Customer(1).ContactName = "Sandy" CustCol.Customer(1).Phone = "555-2312" In the movie LA Story Sarah Jessica Parker's character is called Sandy and gives Steve Martin's character her phone number which is...555-2312. The movie happened to be on tv in the background when I was writing the article. Just when I needed a bit of sample data that scene happened. According to http://www.radivarl.demon.co.uk/nick/media/555.htm[^] I misspelled her name.
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Can you think of why a programmer would ever use a string to act as a bitmap field? e.g.
DECLARE @Bitmap varchar(20)
SELECT @Bitmap = '00110100100011011110'The beauty of bitmasks is that the values are compact (at one bit each) and you get the benefit of bitwise ANDing and ORing. I winced at this, but can you think of an instance where this might make sense (except for the obvious "Hey, I just read a cool article about bitmaps! Computer scientists use 'em all the time.")
With a shudder I remember my introduction to programming on a ZX81 with 1K RAM. After quickly exhausting the possibilities of BASIC in a 1K program (even when programs are stored tokenized, with each keyword a single byte), I had to resort to machine code. A program then consisted of a subroutine (using GOSUB/RETURN) that POKE'd bytes into memory, reading them from hexadecimal strings stored in DATA statements such as. 10 DATA "3AFB3C2A1F" I had to manually write these hex strings by looking up Z80 opcodes and converting registers etc into bitfields (not enough memory to run an assembler). Once it was all in memory, I'd write it to a file (cassette-based), then write another program to load the binary data and transfer control into it (can't remember how that was achieved though). On the other hand, it taught me all the basics of programming, in a very real and demanding environment. Binary though, I can see no good reason for that.
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Thanks for the excuse to go back and look at that again. It's hard to believe that back then I thought that CCustomerCol was a good naming convention. And as for LetXML and GetXML!?!?! :sigh: To this day nobody has ever noticed (or at least admitted noticing) the following: CustCol.Customer(1).Company = "LA" CustCol.Customer(1).ContactName = "Sandy" CustCol.Customer(1).Phone = "555-2312" In the movie LA Story Sarah Jessica Parker's character is called Sandy and gives Steve Martin's character her phone number which is...555-2312. The movie happened to be on tv in the background when I was writing the article. Just when I needed a bit of sample data that scene happened. According to http://www.radivarl.demon.co.uk/nick/media/555.htm[^] I misspelled her name.
Oh yeah, SaNdee. Just after Steve Martin noted that at least she had a normal name. Best line in that movie when SaNdee persuades Steve to get an enema. Afterwards, she says something like "that really clears my head" and Steve replies, "clears your head? You must be doing it wrong." I'm guessing the Let and Get statements were more in vogue at the time you wrote the article what with VB6 and all.
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Can you think of why a programmer would ever use a string to act as a bitmap field? e.g.
DECLARE @Bitmap varchar(20)
SELECT @Bitmap = '00110100100011011110'The beauty of bitmasks is that the values are compact (at one bit each) and you get the benefit of bitwise ANDing and ORing. I winced at this, but can you think of an instance where this might make sense (except for the obvious "Hey, I just read a cool article about bitmaps! Computer scientists use 'em all the time.")
Are you sure it is a bitmask and not actually a bitmap? When we load our test or demo environments and need to sanitize the data we have strings in some of our setup sprocs that replace various fields like encrypted passwords, binary documents and images with pre-determined strings.
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With a shudder I remember my introduction to programming on a ZX81 with 1K RAM. After quickly exhausting the possibilities of BASIC in a 1K program (even when programs are stored tokenized, with each keyword a single byte), I had to resort to machine code. A program then consisted of a subroutine (using GOSUB/RETURN) that POKE'd bytes into memory, reading them from hexadecimal strings stored in DATA statements such as. 10 DATA "3AFB3C2A1F" I had to manually write these hex strings by looking up Z80 opcodes and converting registers etc into bitfields (not enough memory to run an assembler). Once it was all in memory, I'd write it to a file (cassette-based), then write another program to load the binary data and transfer control into it (can't remember how that was achieved though). On the other hand, it taught me all the basics of programming, in a very real and demanding environment. Binary though, I can see no good reason for that.
Man, this is the best thread ever. Talk about walks down memory lane. Your ZX81 tape recorder worked. You lucky sod. My first computer was a second hand zx81, that never managed to talk to the tape recorder, no matter how I tried. Every time I needed the ZX81 to do anything I had to write the code again from scratch. Tim Hartnell's books became well thumbed and dog eared. Am I right in recalling the RANDOMIZE keyboard being involved in launching machine code? I always thought that was funny because genuinely you never had any idea if the string of crap you transcribed would work. RANDOMIZE always seemed appropriate. Still. At the age of 10 the zx81 showed me what I wanted to do for a living and 26 years later I get paid for doing it. If Clive Sinclair had sold "Build Your Own Hedge Fund" kits I'd probably be broke and/or in jail by now. You know what? that's my new sig.
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Can you think of why a programmer would ever use a string to act as a bitmap field? e.g.
DECLARE @Bitmap varchar(20)
SELECT @Bitmap = '00110100100011011110'The beauty of bitmasks is that the values are compact (at one bit each) and you get the benefit of bitwise ANDing and ORing. I winced at this, but can you think of an instance where this might make sense (except for the obvious "Hey, I just read a cool article about bitmaps! Computer scientists use 'em all the time.")
Yes, and the evidence is here on CP.[^] However, I wasn't doing any bit manipulations, needed to represent variable length ciphers, and was just too lazy to do the fancy bit-shifting, etc.
CQ de W5ALT
Walt Fair, Jr., P. E. Comport Computing Specializing in Technical Engineering Software
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Man, this is the best thread ever. Talk about walks down memory lane. Your ZX81 tape recorder worked. You lucky sod. My first computer was a second hand zx81, that never managed to talk to the tape recorder, no matter how I tried. Every time I needed the ZX81 to do anything I had to write the code again from scratch. Tim Hartnell's books became well thumbed and dog eared. Am I right in recalling the RANDOMIZE keyboard being involved in launching machine code? I always thought that was funny because genuinely you never had any idea if the string of crap you transcribed would work. RANDOMIZE always seemed appropriate. Still. At the age of 10 the zx81 showed me what I wanted to do for a living and 26 years later I get paid for doing it. If Clive Sinclair had sold "Build Your Own Hedge Fund" kits I'd probably be broke and/or in jail by now. You know what? that's my new sig.
Ditto, but replace ZX81 with Sinclair Spectrum (you must be a couple of years older than me :-)) <Shivers> Hedge Fund Management</Shivers> So lucky that didn't happen.
ragnaroknrol The Internet is For Porn[^]
Pete o'Hanlon: If it wasn't insulting tools, I'd say you were dumber than a bag of spanners. -
Can you think of why a programmer would ever use a string to act as a bitmap field? e.g.
DECLARE @Bitmap varchar(20)
SELECT @Bitmap = '00110100100011011110'The beauty of bitmasks is that the values are compact (at one bit each) and you get the benefit of bitwise ANDing and ORing. I winced at this, but can you think of an instance where this might make sense (except for the obvious "Hey, I just read a cool article about bitmaps! Computer scientists use 'em all the time.")
#cough# years ago, I was working on an interface to the ATM / POS network for the bank. The message spec has a bitmap at the beginning indicating the fields that would be provided; IIR it was 4 or 8 bytes. We created it properly but communicated with the card server sending strings rather then byte arrays; don't ask. Windows in it's infinite wisdom saw that the two boxes had different code pages so converted the messages. It took us an age to find that one and I got a 3 1/2 year contract in Budapest on the back of it.
Panic, Chaos, Destruction. My work here is done. or "Drink. Get drunk. Fall over." - P O'H
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Ditto, but replace ZX81 with Sinclair Spectrum (you must be a couple of years older than me :-)) <Shivers> Hedge Fund Management</Shivers> So lucky that didn't happen.
ragnaroknrol The Internet is For Porn[^]
Pete o'Hanlon: If it wasn't insulting tools, I'd say you were dumber than a bag of spanners.I might not be older than you. The Spectrum was available when I got my ZX81. My mother found one for £10 in a second hand shop. Hence the non working tape recorder issue. I upgraded to a Spectrum +2 in 1988. I convinced my mother to spend over £200 (Irish) on the +2 by keying in the following program in the store: 10 Print "Tick" 20 Pause 50 30 Print "Tock" 40 Pause 50 50 GOTO 10 I was rushing to get something up on screen, and didn't have time for CLS's I fear we've strayed a little from the topic. -Richard
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I might not be older than you. The Spectrum was available when I got my ZX81. My mother found one for £10 in a second hand shop. Hence the non working tape recorder issue. I upgraded to a Spectrum +2 in 1988. I convinced my mother to spend over £200 (Irish) on the +2 by keying in the following program in the store: 10 Print "Tick" 20 Pause 50 30 Print "Tock" 40 Pause 50 50 GOTO 10 I was rushing to get something up on screen, and didn't have time for CLS's I fear we've strayed a little from the topic. -Richard
Halcyon days, getting the graphics to work taught me more about binary than my all Uni lectures combined .... I remember Sh*tting myself in a branch of Rumbelows at the tender age of 7 when the Commodore I was trying to "program" gave the message "The operation you have performed is illegal", I expected the police to turn up! I got my Speccy straight out the trap in 1983, aged 8/9. After that, my dad bought every machine as it was becoming "redundant" we had a Sinclair QL (seriously - with free thermal printer) and an Electron so late, my mates all just got Amigas / STs. That said, the Acorn was a much better learning machine, my mates just played Uridium.
ragnaroknrol The Internet is For Porn[^]
Pete o'Hanlon: If it wasn't insulting tools, I'd say you were dumber than a bag of spanners. -
Halcyon days, getting the graphics to work taught me more about binary than my all Uni lectures combined .... I remember Sh*tting myself in a branch of Rumbelows at the tender age of 7 when the Commodore I was trying to "program" gave the message "The operation you have performed is illegal", I expected the police to turn up! I got my Speccy straight out the trap in 1983, aged 8/9. After that, my dad bought every machine as it was becoming "redundant" we had a Sinclair QL (seriously - with free thermal printer) and an Electron so late, my mates all just got Amigas / STs. That said, the Acorn was a much better learning machine, my mates just played Uridium.
ragnaroknrol The Internet is For Porn[^]
Pete o'Hanlon: If it wasn't insulting tools, I'd say you were dumber than a bag of spanners.Ah yes, drawing graphics on 8x8 squares in a copy book and converting the rows into 1s and 0s then poking the resulting values. AS for AND, OR etc, did anyone ever play Make A Chip? I couldn't believe that in college they spent days drilling this stuff into people using examples on a blackboard instead of just letting us play with a program like Make A Chip for 20 minutes. http://www.clive.nl/retro-computer-software/make-chip[^]
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Can you think of why a programmer would ever use a string to act as a bitmap field? e.g.
DECLARE @Bitmap varchar(20)
SELECT @Bitmap = '00110100100011011110'The beauty of bitmasks is that the values are compact (at one bit each) and you get the benefit of bitwise ANDing and ORing. I winced at this, but can you think of an instance where this might make sense (except for the obvious "Hey, I just read a cool article about bitmaps! Computer scientists use 'em all the time.")
"Can you think of why a programmer would ever use a string to act as a bitmap field?" How about, they represent default boolean configuration settings. You can change them after the fact by patching the EX with a different string - once you find the string, of course.