Disk vs. RAM Memory of Stand-Alone vs. Run-Time in Basic PDS (61350)
This article was previously published under Q61350
SUMMARY
There is an apparent contradiction, which needs clarification, at the
top of page 566 in the "Microsoft Basic 7.0: Programmer's Guide" for
Microsoft Basic Professional Development System (PDS) versions 7.0 and
7.1. Page 566 first states: "Stand-alone programs require more disk
space than those requiring the run-time module." Then it states:
"Stand-alone programs do have the following advantages, however:
Stand-alone programs always require less memory than their run-time
equivalents."
The first statement means to say that one stand-alone program requires
more disk space than one equivalent run-time program if you do not
count the size of the run-time module. The second statement means to
say that stand-alone programs always require less memory in RAM than
their run-time equivalents (counting the run-time module).
MORE INFORMATION
One stand-alone program requires less RAM or disk memory than its
run-time equivalent if you count the size of the run-time module.
However, with a large enough number of .EXE programs, the combined
stand-alone programs require more disk storage space than the combined
run-time equivalents, which share one run-time module.
To get an accurate indication of the amount of free RAM available when
running a Basic program, you should use the FRE(-1) function. If you
SHELL to MS-DOS from a Basic program, the run-time module is unloaded
from memory to provide more RAM to the SHELL command. Therefore,
checking available memory from a SHELL command will make it appear
that a run-time module program has much more free RAM than it actually
does.
| Modification Type: |
Minor |
Last Reviewed: |
1/9/2003 |
| Keywords: |
KB61350 |
|