[REBOL] Re: Passing hash keys to functions
From: SunandaDH::aol::com at: 29-Dec-2004 2:47
Carl:
> I'm not sure why Sunanda suggested using strings, but I'm sure there's a
good
> reason - possibly because of the limit to the number of words allowed in
> REBOL. Or perhaps for speed reasons. Sunanda?
I assumed -- possibly wrongly -- that using words rather than strings was a
coding error. The limit on total words will be one problem with this approach,
as you say.
(Depending on the version of REBOL here is an upper limit of around 8192
differently spelled words. I'm not sure there is a limit on the number of
different words of the same spelling that can exist)
Another problem will be if the data was being read from a file. The keys may
not all be in a format that easily converts to words -- perhaps they have
embedded spaces, or characters that don't allow you to use the word in open code.
(Yes, I know a word can have embedded spaces:
blk: copy [] append blk to-word "x x"
but you'd be adding a lot of extra code to handle words like that. One
example: it doesn't lead to blocks you can easily mold and load again)
Sunanda.
