Yes, exactly. You will just have to avoid loading both libraries at the same time, of course. Likely your program can read a configuration file, and load the appropriate library.

While a ZSTRING can't contain a null byte, a regular string should be able to contain it, no matter if it is a variable length or a fixed length one. Yet, I found a strange behavior: dim s as string*80=chr(0)+"Alpha"+chr(0)+"Beta" print asc(s) print s as expected, the first chara...

Right, I forgot, because it compiles perfectly under Linux, since cdecl is the standard here.

So, if we want to split the hair, your comment should have been "'' Otherwise it doesn't compile on Windows"

Years ago I tried to make a font for a TUI in QBASIC. http://www.petesqbsite.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3165&p=20107&sid=8934c3af2075ece11f4dba689127437c#p20107 I tried porting it to FreeBasic: type Font w as long h as long d as any ptr end type enum FB_FONT_8 = 0, FB_FONT_14 FB_FONT...

In the old QBASIC there was also another reason for not using the 0 terminator: since QBASIC didn't have the BYTE data type , the only way to store a single byte variable inside an UDT was to store it as STRING*1. Adding a zero after that would have made it useless. FreeBasic has the BYTE and UBYTE ...

There is no plan to support OpenGL in dos, since it would require to include a whole OpenGL driver in the graphic runtime. And the only driver available for dos is a very, very outdated version of Mesa

The string must always be null terminated. Otherwise, it won't work with all string functions, because string functions expect a null character. Not necessarily. The only information needed by the string function is where the string ends: and that information can be provided by putting a zero at th...

Well, using generics you wouldn't have to dig deeply in the language, all you have to do is to include a simple header file. In C++ (that uses generics), if you want to implement a linked list, or an associative array, you can dig in the language, but you don't have to if you don't want. Declaring a...

This example should draw a line on the screen, over the windows already displayed

Actually, there are two possibilities: one is implementing generics, the other is implementing only some containers (dictionaries and lists, for example) as part of the language. Both solutions have advantages and disadvantages: generics and templates is surely more versatile, although more like c++...

Do you suggest to implement it using hash table or binary tree?

By the way, a ZSTRING doesn't have that issue: its length is exactly as declared, inside a type Yes, but the maximum number of useful characters for the user is 'length - 1' (because of the mandatory terminal character). I made some tests: it is actually possible to use all the characters, removing...

What is the point of using a FIELD parameter when you can already use ZSTRING? It's literally just one character to add. Maybe in QB mode the strings inside a TYPE should be treated as ZSTRINGS, just to make UDT compatible with QB (in case one is porting a program that was supposed to read a file wi...

At this point, I doubt: changing that would break too much existing FreeBasic code.

By the way, a ZSTRING doesn't have that issue: its length is exactly as declared, inside a type

1) No, I have just tested on DosBox, FreeBasic returns an error message if there is no DPMI extender. By the way, is the file CWSDPMI.EXE either in the FreeBasic directory, or in another directory in the search path, the program written in FreeBasic (and the compiler itself) can invoke it, loading a...