TIB: TI-Phone Database
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TIB: TI-Phone Database
Please email me a copy of this program :)
alurgee@aol.com
In a message dated 2/13/99 10:02:57 PM Eastern Standard Time, jody1@alaska.net
writes:
> I like to build things as they go along, too. If I want the program to
> do something some way, then I try to make it do that right from the
> start. Otherwise I've found that the entire thing gets really ugly,
> especially if you have things that need to set in various places to
> accomplish one task. It just gets to be too much if you start changing
> things later and then you realize that somewhere in the middle you
> forgot to change the way G increases or the way F decreases or something
> like that. It can sure take a lot of trouble shooting when that
> happens. Anyway....
> I think that a pretty good product could be created in BASIC. I say
> this mostly because I don't know any ASM, but I want to come up with
> something workable. I think that the best bet for storing most of the
> data will be to use strings. They are the most memory friendly.
> However, they are annoyingly difficult and slow to rearrange and mess
> with. However, lists are not. The closest thing that I have ever done
> to something like this was a Rolodex type phone directory. It allowed
> entry of a name (up to sixteen characters [the width of the 83 screen])
> and it required an 8 character phone number (the eighth character was
> the hyphen). The user could entire as many different entries as memory
> allowed. After an entry was inputed the program scanned all the
> entries, very quickly, searching for any duplicates. If one was found,
> then user could either create a second entry or just leave the one. If
> no duplicate was found, the program would insert the new entry in
> alphabetical order in with all the other entries. Then, of course, the
> next time you looked at the display of entries the new one would be in
> the correct spot. One the display there was a little > sign on the left
> that would show which entry you were on, and the top line on the screen
> showed "xx of yy" where xx was the number of the entry you were on, and
> yy was the total number of entries. One of the other neat things about
> the display was that you could jump to the top of any given letter of
> the alphabet. So, if you wanted to jump to the top of the J's, all you
> had to do was press J. This was very quick because of the type of
> search algorithm. Instead of just checking each entry after the next to
> see if it was there yet, it would check the middle entry. If the middle
> entry was greater than the desired one, then you could automatically
> eliminate latter half of the entries without actually having to check
> them. Likewise, if the middle entry was smaller than the desired one,
> you could eliminate the first half without having to check them. This
> process was repeated untill you eventually got to the one you wanted.
> Anyway, other options from the main screen included being able to search
> by name, search by number, delete specific entries, add new entries
> (duh!), display entries, reset the phone book, and quit. The reason for
> the reset option was because I wanted the program to be self contained.
> For example, the program used a few special lists and str6. If you
> someone transfered the program to a friends calc and forgot, or just
> didn't realize, to transfer the lists as well, then it wouldn't work.
> However, when they select 'reset' the program automatically sets
> everything that it will need. Anyway, the program itself was only 3329
> bytes. There were also 2 lists that took up 13+9(number of entries)
> each. Lastly, the program used strings 1,3,and 6. String 3 was 39
> bytes, and the other two started at 9 bytes each, and went up depending
> one the number of entries. Well, I've kind of rambled about this long
> enough. If anyone wants more specifics about how the program actually
> works, just let me know. I guess the point of all this is to show that
> you can use lists and strings effectively to keep the memory low, and
> you can also have things sort in alphabetical order.
>
> Jody Snider
> jody1@alaska.net
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