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A1 Constraints

6502Nerd edited this page Nov 18, 2020 · 1 revision

Appendix - Constraints

dflat was built to be light weight to run reasonably well on an 8 bit CPU, and compact to fit in to 16KB ROM. This was done with some compromises;

  • Only integer math : ok for games and interactive apps, less so for other things. Fixed point math can be simulated of course
  • No bounds checking : Be careful..dflat in this regard is a bit like C, let's you do whatever
  • Simple strings : Operating on strings is done through a single scratch buffer - doing fancy manipulations all in one expression can lead to weird results, in which case break up the expression in to a number of statements.

dflat is not really a beginner's language as it can be a little unforgiving, although with the performance kick and procedural paradigm hopefully still worth using as an alternative to Oric BASIC.