let me rephrase that

[Dar Scott]

On Monday, February 23, 2004, at 11:39 PM, Thomas McGrath III wrote:

> Which is better for getting multiple pieces of information and acting 
> upon them?
> An array, custom property sets and custom properties or delimited 
> items in lines in a variable?

Except for character chunks, arbitrary chunk references take time 
related to the size of whole value, so unless you always use chunk 
repeat loops, this is better only for smaller total values.

Arrays have an overhead, but are great for storing many values.  There 
are some limitations in passing about as values, but those can be 
handled.  Currently they cannot be nested, but values can be strings 
that can have chunk interpretations.  Also, there are ways to use the 
arrays that make them look multidimensional.  Keys are strings (no 
nulls) and elements can be any value except array.  Since keys are 
strings, be careful with numerical keys; the numberFormat property will 
apply.

Custom properties and custom property sets persist in stacks except 
standalones, so whatever you chose above might be stored this way 
respectively.

Arrays are referenced by name.  That can be handy.  It might be hard to 
remember if age is item 7 or 8.

Dar Scott