Hi Bob,

BL>           I found something interesting about VB. It allows a
BL> maximum 32K for strings, but what they don't say is that each module
BL> is only allowed 64K string memory.

Yes they do. I think is is somewhere in the back of the book.

BL>  In rep2pkt, I was reading 32K of the packet into buf$, and then
BL> reading the message out of that as msg$. It's a lot faster that way,
BL> rather than try to find the message directly from the file.

okay.

BL> What I ended up with was two big strings (buf$ and msg$), and when I
BL> processed msg$ later, I just ran out of memory. To cure it, all I had
BL> to do was put    buf$ = ""    once I had read msg$, and
release the 32K
BL> it was using.

Yeah.

BL>  God, the book is useless! I read it 47 different ways, and I don't
BL> think the guy who wrote it realises that this is all you have to do.

What book ?

BL>  Is this a common trick, or is it unique to VB?

It depends on how the product allocates it's memory. VB is dynamic
and hence your buf$ = "" effectively frees the memory. Some products
are static and therefor using your buf$ = "" will simply fill the
buffer with ASCII spaces or place a NUL character in the first cell.

Regards, Brenton
@EOT:

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