[VA] Short & Sweet Math Challenge #22: April 1st, 2018 Spring Special

[rprosperi]

(04-07-2018 01:05 AM)Valentin Albillo Wrote:  As for all function calls being 2-byte, that's not the case. There are 1-byte functions and there are 4-byte functions, etc. For instance:

      1 DISP is 5 bytes
      1 DISP 1 is 6 bytes (the 1 is 1-byte)
      1 DISP LOG(1) is 7 bytes (LOG is 1-byte)
      1 DISP LN(1) is 7 bytes (LN, an alternate spelling of LOG, is also 1-byte)
      1 DISP LOG10(1) is 7 bytes (LOG10 is also 1-byte)
      1 DISP LGT(1) is 10 bytes (LGT, an alternate spelling of LOG10, is 4 bytes)
      1 DISP LOGP1(1) is 10 bytes (LOGP1 is also 4 bytes)
      1 DISP LOG2(1) is 10 bytes (LOG2 is in the Math ROM and it's also 4 bytes)

so you see, in the above examples there are mainframe 1-byte functions, mainframe 4-byte functions, and external 4-byte functions. The mainframe 4-byte functions are the ones less used (LOG10 and LGT are the identical function but the former is 1-byte while the latter is 4-byte).

Thanks for clarifying, I have been exploring this exact thing today, editing line 1, using CAT to check, edit again, CAT again, etc. Very illuminating! I was getting what I thought were truly odd results, but your well-chosen examples show the storage needed for varying function statements is more subtle and complex than I recalled; alternate names requiring different bytes is unexpected too.

As for alternate names, presumably included for familiarity to different users, while LN for LOG makes sense, LOGT for LOG10 seems rather odd; is this commonly used in Math research, I never encountered it in Engineering.