Mindboards

I don't think FormatNum actually works with strings. The compiler must be generating bad code or something. The opcode that I added to the enhanced firmware definitely should not do the right thing if you pass in an array instead of a scalar as the third parameter (iirc).

fmtnum ar_out, fmt_in, value

Here's the firmware code:
This suggests to me that it is not passing your string into the fmtnum opcode in the NBC code generated by the NXC layer since it would return an ERR_INSTR status value if it did.

John Hansen

hm, it appears to work correctly although it seems to work (and should work) coincidently faulty -
a real Wunderhorn, this Lego firmware

We cannot pass an array member as a reference. The work around is to use the array index as the reference variable. Is it possible to resolve the array access as a reference?

I indeed just got repetitive runtime errors (File error -1) using printf with "%s" and variable strings.

so my wish is:
a real correct working printf function like in ANSI C stdio.h

that means:
- working with both nums and strings
- working with multiple format strings and multiple variables

Can we have "real" pass-by-referencing? I recall that you [John] once said something like this:

Guess who wrote: There is no real passing by reference, so there should be no speed improvement between

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#define LOL void foo(int &bar[])

and

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#define LOL void foo(int bar[])

in

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LOL
{

}

int myarr[1000];
foo(myarr);

in terms of speed.

I think this shouldn't be too hard to implement [using NBC global variable magic card tricks], and it'd help speed in some of my programs. (I may be wrong.)

For inline functions it might not be too hard to replace reference parameters with whatever you pass in using some kind of NBC magic but a non-line function that is called at run-time in more than one place with different input arguments could not be magically "fixed" by the compiler at compile time. A real reference type requires real firmware VM support for pointers, which does not exist currently - and without a lot of work on the enhanced NBC/NXC firmware probably will never exist.

John Hansen

I want support in the enhanced FW and API functions, for the "Absolute position reglation in firmware" feature that Nicolas created.

It is an awesome feature, and exactly what I have been wanting for a long time, but the FW isn't based on the "normal" enhanced FW. Now I can finally have a "rack and pinion" type car, and have it automatically steer to the right position .

me too! :)

I will work to incorporate the new absolute position regulation changes from Nicolas into my enhanced NBC/NXC firmware. I am also working on getting my firmware SVN repository up on sourceforge. Hopefully I can get it up there this month.

John Hansen

John, what do you think about "outsourcing" some libs in order to decrease the memory NXC needs?
e.g., I dont regularily need graphic libraries (except fonts).
My suggestion would be to resurrect #include for specific libraries -
nxtdefs.h may be included automatically (or- maybe not) -
and anyone who wants different fonts may
#include "fonts.h"
who wants advanced graphics:
#include "graphics.h"
and maybe who ever (I actually can't imagine who exactly) likes faked stdio functions may use
#include "fakedio.h"

ok-
the last one admittedly was a joke (because this lib's size would extend even the nxtdefs.h) -
no, I'm kidding -
but honestly, I think the rest might be a good idea... :)