Category : Pascal Source Code
Archive   : PASTUT.ZIP
Filename : CHAP09.TXT

Chapter 9
RECORDS


A VERY SIMPLE RECORD
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We come to the grandaddy of all data ================
structures in Pascal, the record. A SMALLREC.PAS
record is composed of a number of ================
variables any of which can be of any
predefined data type, including other
records. Rather than spend time trying to define a record in
detail, lets go right to the first example program,
SMALLREC.PAS. This is a program using nonsense data that will
illustrate the use of a record.

There is only one entry in the type declaration part of the
program, the record identified by the name Description. The
record is composed of three fields, the Year, Model, and
Engine variables. Notice that the three fields are each of
a different type, indicating that the record can be of mixed
types. You have a complete example of the way a record is
defined before you. It is composed of the identifier
Description, the = sign, the reserved word record, the list
of elements, and followed by the reserved word end. This is
one of the places in Pascal where an end is used without a
corresponding begin. Notice that this only defines a type,
it does not define any variables. That is done in the var
declaration where the variable Truck is defined as a record
of type Description and Cars is defined to have 10 complete
records of the type Description. The variable Truck has three
components, Year, Model, and Engine, and any or all of these
components can be used to store data pertaining to Truck.

When assigning data to the variable Truck, for example, there
are actually three parts to the variable, so we use three
assignment statements, one for each of the sub-fields. In
order to assign values to the various sub-fields, the variable
name is followed by the sub-field name with a separating
period. The "var.sub_field" combination is a variable name.

Keep in mind that Truck is a complete record containing three
variables, and to assign or use one of the variables, you must
designate which sub-field you are interested in. Examine
lines 16 through 18 of the program where the three fields are
assigned meaningless data for illustration. The Year field
is assigned an integer number, the Model field is assigned the
name Pickup, and the Engine variable is assigned the value
Diesel.

A loop is then used to assign data to all 10 records of Car.
In order to further illustrate that there are actually 30

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variables in use here, a few are changed at random in lines
26 through 30, being very careful to maintain the required
types as defined in the type declaration part of the program.
Finally, all ten composite variables, consisting of 30 actual
variables in a logical grouping are printed out using the same
"var.sub-field" notation described above.

If the preceding description of a record is not clear in your
mind, review it very carefully. It's a very important concept
in Pascal, and you won't have a hope of a chance of
understanding the next example until this one is clear. Be
sure to compile and run SMALLREC.PAS so you can study the
output.



A SUPER RECORD
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Examine the Pascal example file BIGREC.PAS ================
for a very interesting record. First we BIGREC.PAS
have a constant defined. Ignore it for ================
the moment, we will come back to it later.
Within the type declaration we have three
records defined, and upon close examination, you will notice
that the first two records are included as part of the
definition of the third record. The record identified as
Person, actually contains 9 variable definitions, three within
the Full_Name record, three of its own, and three within the
Date record. This is a type declaration and does not actually
define any variables, that is done in the var part of the
program.

The var part of the program defines some variables beginning
with the array of Friend containing 50 (because of the
constant definition in the const part) records of the user
defined type, Person. Since the type Person defines 9 fields,
we have now defined 9 times 50 = 450 separate and distinct
variables, each with its own defined type. Remember that
Pascal is picky about assigning data by the correct type.
Each of the 450 separate variables has its own type associated
with it, and the compiler will generate an error if you try
to assign any of those variables the wrong type of data.
Since Person is a type definition, it can be used to define
more than one variable, and in fact it is used again to define
three more records, Self, Mother, and Father. These three
records are each composed of 9 variables, so we have 27 more
variables which we can manipulate within the program. Finally
we have the variable Index defined as a simple byte type
variable.





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HOW TO MANIPULATE ALL OF THAT DATA
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In the program we begin by assigning data to all of the fields
of Self in lines 31 through 43. Examining the first three
statements of the main program, we see the construction we
learned in the last example program being used, namely the
period between descriptor fields. The main record is named
Self, and we are interested in the first part of it,
specifically the Name part of the Person record. Since the
Name part of the Person record is itself composed of three
parts, we must designate which component of it we are
interested in. Self.Name.First_Name is the complete
description of the first name of Self and is used in the
assignment statement in line 31 where it is assigned the name
of "Charley". The next two fields are handled in the same way
and are self explanatory.


WHAT IS THE WITH STATEMENT?
____________________________________________________________

Continuing on to the fourth field, the City, there are only
two levels required because City is not another record
definition. The fourth field is therefore completely defined
by Self.City. Notice the with Self do statement. This is a
shorthand notation used with record definitions to simplify
coding. From the begin in line 34 to the matching end in line
43, any variables within the Self record are used as though
they had a Self. in front of them. It greatly simplifies
coding to be able to omit the leading identifier within the
with section of code. You will see that City, State, and
Zipcode are easily assigned values without further reference
to the Self variable. When we get to the Day part of the
birthday, we are back to three levels and the complete
definition is Self.Birthday.Day but once again, the Self. part
is taken care of automatically because we are still within the
with Self do area.

To illustrate the with statement further, another is
introduced in line 39, with Birthday do, and an area is
defined by the begin end pair which extends from line 39
through line 42. Within this area both leading identifiers
are handled automatically to simplify coding, and Month is
equivalent to writing Self.Birthday.Month if both with
statements were removed.


HOW FAR DOWN CAN YOU NEST THE WITH STATEMENT?
____________________________________________________________

You may be wondering how many levels of nesting are allowed
in record definitions. There doesn't appear to be a limit
according to the Pascal definition, but we do get a hint at

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how far it is possible to go. In TURBO Pascal, you are
allowed to have with statements nested to nine levels, and it
would be worthless to nest with statements deeper than the
level of records. Any program requiring more levels than nine
is probably far beyond the scope of your programming ability,
and mine, for a long time.

After assigning a value to Year, the entire record of Self is
defined, all nine variables. It should be pointed out that
even though Self is composed of nine separate variables, it
is proper to call Self a variable itself because it is a
record variable.


SUPER-ASSIGNMENT STATEMENTS
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The statement in line 45, "Mother := Self;" is very
interesting. Since both of these are records, both are the
same type of record, and both therefore contain 9 variables,
Pascal is smart enough to recognize that, and assign all nine
values contained in Self to the corresponding variables of
Mother. So after one statement, the record variable Mother
is completely defined. The statement in line 46 assigns the
same values to the nine respective variables of Father, and
the next two lines assign all 50 Friend variables the same
data. By this point in the program, we have therefore
generated 450 + 27 = 477 separate pieces of data so far in
this program. We could print it all out, but since it is
nonsense data, it would only waste time and paper. Lines 49
through 52 write out three sample pieces of the data for your
inspection.


WHAT GOOD IS ALL OF THIS
____________________________________________________________

It should be obvious to you that what this program does, even
though the data is nonsense, appears to be the beginning of
a database management system, which indeed it is. Instead of
assigning nonsense data, a list could be read in and stored
for manipulation. It is a crude beginning, and has a long way
to go to be useful, but you should see a seed for a useful
program.

Now to go back to the const in line 4 as promised. The number
of friends was defined as 50 and used for the size of the
array and in the assignment loop in line 47. You can now edit
this number and see how big this database can become on your
computer. If you are using TURBO Pascal, you will be limited
to slightly more than 1000 because of the 64K limitation of
an executable program, and the fact that all of this data is
stored within that 64K boundary. It should be noted that
TURBO Pascal 4.0 or 5.x allows a program larger than 64K but

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still places a limitation of 64K on each compilation unit.
See how big you can make the number of friends before you get
the memory overflow message. Keep the number in mind because
when we get to the chapter on Pointers and Dynamic Allocation,
you will see a marked increase in allowable size, especially
if you have a large amount of RAM installed in your computer.


A VARIANT RECORD
____________________________________________________________

If any part of this chapter is still unclear, it would be good
for you to go back and review it at this time. The next
example will really tax your mind to completely understand it,
and this will be true especially if the prior material is not
clear.

Examine the Pascal program VARREC.PAS for ================
an example of a program with a variant VARREC.PAS
record definition. In this example, we ================
first define a scalar type, namely
Kind_Of_Vehicle for use within the record.
Then we have a record defining Vehicle, intended to define
several different vehicles, each with different kinds of data.
It would be possible to define all variables for all types of
vehicles, but it would be a waste of storage space to define
the number of tires for a boat, or the number of propeller
blades used on a car or truck. The variant record lets us
define the data precisely for each vehicle without wasting
data storage space.


WHAT IS A TAG-FIELD?
____________________________________________________________

In the record definition we have the usual record header
followed by three variables defined in the same manner as the
records in the last two example programs. Then we come to the
case statement. Following this statement, the record is
different for each of the four types defined in the associated
scalar definition. The variable What_Kind is called the
tag-field and must be defined as a scalar type prior to the
record definition. The tag-field is used to select the
variant, when the program uses one of the variables of this
record type. The tag-field is followed by a colon and its
type definition, then the reserved word of. A list of the
variants is then given, with each of the variants having the
variables for its particular case defined. The list of
variables for one variant is called the field list.

A few rules are in order at this point. The variants do not
have to have the same number of variables in each field list,
and in fact, one or more of the variants may have no variables
at all in its variant part. If a variant has no variables,

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it must still be defined with a pair of empty parentheses
followed by a semi-colon. All variables in the entire variant
part must have unique names. The three variables, Wheels,
Tires, and Tyres, all mean the same thing to the user, but
they must be different for the compiler. You may use the same
identifiers again in other records and for simple variables
anywhere else in the program. The Pascal compiler can tell
which variable you mean by its context. Using the same
variable name should be discouraged as bad programming
practice because it may confuse you or another person trying
to understand your program at a later date.

The final rule is that the variant part of the record must be
the last part of it, and in fact, the last part of any or all
variants can itself have a variant part to it. That is
getting pretty advanced for our level of use of Pascal at this
time however.


USING THE VARIANT RECORD
____________________________________________________________

We properly define four variables with the record type Vehicle
in line 22 and go on to examine the program itself.

We begin by defining one of our variables of type Vehicle,
namely the variable named Ford. The seven lines assigning
values to Ford are similar to the prior examples with the
exception of line 28. In that line the tag-field which
selects the particular variant used is set equal to the value
Truck, which is a scalar definition, not a variable. This
means that the variables named Motor, Tires, and Payload are
available for use with the record Ford, but the variables
named Wheels, Engine, Tyres, etc. are not available in the
record named Ford.

Next, we will define the record Sunfish as a Boat, and define
all of its variables in lines 33 through 41. All of Sunfish's
variables are defined but in a rather random order to
illustrate that they need not be defined in a particular
order. You should remember the with statement from the last
example program.

To go even further in randomly assigning the variables to a
record, we redefine Ford as having an Engine which it can only
have if it is a car. This is one of the fine points of the
Pascal record. If you assign any of the variant variables,
the record is changed to that variant, but it is the
programmers responsibility to assign the correct tag-field to
the record, not Pascal's. Good programming practice would be
to assign the tag-field before assigning any of the variant
variables. The remainder of the Ford variables are assigned
to complete that record, the non-variant part remaining from
the last assignment.

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The variable Mac is now set equal to the variable Sunfish in
line 48. All variables within the record are copied to Mac
including the tag-field, making Mac a Boat.


NOW TO SEE WHAT WE HAVE IN THE RECORDS
____________________________________________________________

We have assigned Ford to be a car, and two boats exist, namely
Sunfish and Mac. Since Schwinn was never defined, it has no
data in it, and is at this point useless. The Ford tag-field
has been defined as a car, so it should be true in the if
statement, and the message in line 51 should print. The
Sunfish is not a bicycle, so it will not print. The Mac has
been defined as a boat in the single assignment statement, so
it will print a message with an indication that all of the
data in the record was transferred to its variables.

Even though we can make assignment statements with records,
they cannot be used in any mathematical operations such as
addition, or multiplication. They are simply used for data
storage. It is true however, that the individual elements in
a record can be used in any mathematical statements legal for
their respective types.

One other point should be mentioned. The tag-field can be
completely eliminated resulting in a "free union" variant
record. This is possible because Pascal, as you may remember
from above, will automatically assign the variant required
when you assign data to one of the variables within a variant.
This is the reason that all variables within any of the
variants must have unique names. The free union record should
be avoided in your early programming efforts because you
cannot test a record to see what variant it has been assigned
to it. It is definitely an advanced technique in Pascal.

Be sure you compile and run VARREC.PAS and study the output
until you understand it completely.


PROGRAMMING EXERCISE
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1. Write a simple program with a record to store the names
of five of your friends and display the names.









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