Variable Limits

[Cory]

How much data can be stuffed into a string variable?

[joe]

Cory -

 

From the book:

String Variables

These store text and can contain anything within the range of nothing, to The Decline and Fall of the

Roman Empire. There are no actual length limits to string variables, but there are both practical limits

and limits outside the control of Macro Express such as hard drive space, environment space and

Registry limits.

[Cory]

Well that doesn't help much. But it sounds like I won't need to worry for what I am doing. I really need to get some time to read my book. I spent $50 on it and yet I haven't done any more than browse it.

[joe]

There is not a real limit to the length of a text string. The longer they are, however, the longer it takes to process them. I suggest that you create a test on a real, real, real long string. Try something like searching for a character, or counting characters in a loop. You will be pleasantly surprised!

[Cory]

Interesting. I have a project now I'm thinking of trying that out on.

 

There was a guy asking about replacing all commas in a word document I replied to. I was wondering if one could read the entire file into a ME variable and do a sting replacement and write teh variable out ot a new file. I bet it would work.

[joe]

It will be pretty fast. I used the book as a test. Copied the whole thing (16,000 lines) to the clipboard, set T1 from the clipboard, replaced all commas with nothing, and finally saved it back out to a file. The whole process took under a minute.

[Cory]

Excellent. Good to know.