ejbehr@rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu (Eric Behr) (03/19/91)
I'm writing a program for rather exotic matrix computations (quick & dirty research tool, nothing useful to an ordinary person). It will have to deal with potentially large matrices (containing structured variables, two longints each), and a lot of them at that. Since I want parts of it to do data preparation which would run on a Mac, I want to make it efficient in terms of storage. Here is the question: what do typical implementations do when a large parameter is passed as a var? does this work exactly like passing a pointer, or does the procedure somehow use more memory that way? Similarly, is there a difference between passing the result (e.g. in a procedure that multiplies two large matrices) as a var parameter, versus having the function return it as a pointer to a matrix? If it matters, I'm using Think Pascal on the Mac and IBM Pascal compiler under AIX. Sorry if this is trivial or confusing - I admit I haven't thought about it too much. Thanks - E. -- Eric Behr, Illinois State University, Mathematics Department Internet: ejbehr@rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu Bitnet: ebehr@ilstu