Ways to handle data.

Hi, I was trying to encapsule behaviors in a bullet hell using data. And done a demo by recreating undertale bullet hell system on smilebasic. Now I'm facing a problem: 1-I have a lot of repeated data. I know that a technique is to inherate data from a base pattern and then do small changes... but this lead to the problem 2 2- Calling Restore or spanim cause after another call of Restore cause the lose of data from the first one. This is a simple example:

@pattern1
Data "create_bullet", 240,100 //Create a bullet
  Data "animate_bullet","I","@pattern2",0 //Set an animation to previous bullet
Data "create_bullet", 220, 100 //Create another bullet
Data "another_command"
...
Data "end"

@pattern2
//Here go data code according to SPANIM.

In the previous example, everything from the line animate_bullet is lost because the queue of data is remade using the data of @pattern2 If I store a base pattern then the same will happen. I thought of using copy to store data in an array but it only allow one type. Anybody know a library to handle data? or a Strategy to handle this scenario? By the way, the key is KA5D4T3. Use konami code while playing to see different behaviors.

I thought of using copy to store data in an array but it only allow one type.

The ugly solution that first pops to mind is to use two arrays: one for numeric and one for string.

Well, taking Square's idea a bit further, this could actually work. The program needs to know what type to expect in a READ anyway, so you could just PUSH string READs to a string array and PUSH number READs to a number array. This will definitely have some overhead and might noticeably affect performance, or it may not. Some example code, completely untested and may have bugs and/or typos.

RESTORE @LABEL
WHILE TRUE ' there's a BREAK later
   READ S$ ' string defining the type of info to follow, e.g. "create_bullet"
   PUSH READSTRINGS$, S$
   IF S$ == "end" THEN BREAK
   ' Figure out how many inputs this command takes, place this in C%
   FOR I = 1 to C%
      ' figure out whether next READ is string or numeric
      IF NEXTISSTRING THEN
         READ S$ ' I'm reusing the S$ from before because I assume the old value is no longer needed
         PUSH READSTRINGS$, S$
      ELSE
         READ N
         PUSH READNUMBERS, N
      ENDIF
   NEXT
WEND

' When you need to use the info, you use:
S$ = SHIFT(READSTRINGS$)
' or:
N = SHIFT(READNUMBERS)
' and you can do them in the same order and logic as your current READs work.

This. So much this. I tried COPY but I need to give an array with the exact size of the input. However this is much better. However, I didn't use the type in my code since that would make twice the data. Instead, I have a system like json... "key: value" where value could be a string, number or another structure. It's up to my program to decide what type is used based on the key. Also, I don't think that there will be a noticable overhead since push, pop, shift and unshift should have computational complexity of O(1). (Also, I had a similar loop to decide the type of data that contain the key) This is the code I did:

DEF readLabel( S$ )
 DIM D$[0]
 RESTORE S$
 WHILE TRUE
   READ S$
   PUSH D$, S$
  
   IF S$=="END" THEN BREAK
 WEND
 RETURN S$
END

Does that work? You do have numerical DATAs in the example code in the OP. Admittedly I don't have the program yet, so I can't test a thing :(

Everything is a string but I handle number with VAL(String) For example, to resize the box on my demo from above, now I use:

DATA "BOX", "0"
 DATA "160","120","100","100","1","1"

Then, when I read the data, I do this:

COMMAND$=SHIFT(DAT$)
TEMP$=SHIFT(DAT$)
TIMEOUT=VAL(TEMP$)
IF COMMAND$=="BOX" THEN readBox
...
DEF  readBox
 VAR CLIP$
 CLIP$=SHIFT(DAT$)
 BX=VAL(CLIP$) //BOX POS X

 CLIP$=SHIFT(DAT$)
 BY=VAL(CLIP$) //BOX POS Y

 CLIP$=SHIFT(DAT$)
 BW=VAL(CLIP$) //BOX WIDTH

 CLIP$=SHIFT(DAT$)
 BH=VAL(CLIP$) //BOX HEIGHT

 CLIP$=SHIFT(DAT$)
 BCS=VAL(CLIP$) //BOX CHANGE SPEED. 

 CLIP$=SHIFT(DAT$)
 BOX_setClip VAL(CLIP$) //A FUNCTION THAT USE SPCLIP BASED ON THE BOX DIMENSIONS.
end
[CODE]

You can read numerical data do.