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Posted By

SVS
on 2003-04-12
 Maybe I have found a BASIC bug

Try this statement:

A$="*123*": ? INSTR(A$,"*",INSTR(A$,"*")+1)

The result should be 5, but I receive 0 or sometimes, ?FORMULA TOO COMPLEX ERROR
What are your opinions?

Posted By

JamesC
on 2003-04-12
 SVS -->

I was able to obtain 5 or ?FORMULA TOO COMPLEX but not a zero. I suspect that the system isn't releasing stack space from nesting the INSTR function inside itself.

I received the ?FORMULA error on the third attempt and every attempt afterward, even by changing the definition of A$.

Posted By

Csabo
on 2003-04-13
 Re: Bug

I tried it today on my PAL Plus/4, and got the same results as James. Gives 5 first, then after the 3rd try it's ?Formula too complex. Although if at that point I deleted the "2" out of A$'s value, it gave me 4, then 4 again, the the error. Strange! happy

It even sounds like a common question, though, finding the SECOND match of a character inside a string. Writing it into separate INSTR's works well, and it does not give the error.

A$ = "*123" : P = INSTR ( A$, "*" ) : ? INSTR ( A$, "*", P + 1 )

But you could be right about this being a bug.

Posted By

SVS
on 2003-04-14
 I obtained 0 as result, when I run a statement like this,

inside a BASIC prog, then in running mode.
Maybe it gave me zero, instead of error message (0 from INSTR means NOT FOUND).

Posted By

Ulysses777
on 2003-04-14
 C128

Just tried this on the C128 VICE emulator (as the C128 also uses INSTR) and it does the exact same thing after the same number of tries.

Posted By

JamesC
on 2003-04-14
 As official an answer as we might get

without calling Leonard and getting an answering machine:

From the Plus/4 PRG: "25 FORMULA TOO COMPLEX - current calculation is too long or contains too many expressions in parenthesis."

In short, it'll have to be broken into two statements. Find the first occurance, assign it to a variable, then use the variable in the search for the second occurance:

10 A$="*123*"
15 A1=INSTR(A$,"*")
20 A2=INSTR(A$,"*",A1+1)

By using LEN(A$) and a DO:LOOP sequence we can search for even more instances.

Posted By

SVS
on 2003-04-15
 OK, but I think this statement does not require

so much stack depth.
I well remember having written other lines with much more complex calculus levels.
For this reason I think it's a bug, or a bad written subroutine on INSTR code.

Posted By

TCFS
on 2003-07-09
 Re: Maybe I have found a BASIC bug

another bug:

print 1+"2"+-3

but save all of your work before try this

Posted By

JamesC
on 2003-07-09
 Re: Maybe I have found a BASIC bug

This threw me into MONITOR but X returned to BASIC with no problems.

Adding 1+-3 gives -2 properly. Obviously you're trying to 'break' the system by putting the 2 in quotes.



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