The list value described in the previous chapter is special since it is mutable, which means it can change its contents. At one point in time a list can contain the values [1,6,7] and at another time [1,4,8,9]. The values previously described in the manual (Numbers, Strings, Booleans) are immutable since instances like 1, false, or “Hello World” can’t change. In Kick Assembler 3 and later, you will have to lock mutable values if you want to use them in a pass different from the one in which they were defined. When a value is locked, it becomes immutable and calling a function that modifies its content will cause an error. There are two ways to lock a mutable value. You can call its lock function:
// Locking a list with the lock function .var list1 = List().add(1,3,5).lock()
Or you can define it inside a .define directive:
// The define directive locks the defined variables outside its scope
.define list2, list3 {
.var list2 = List().add(1,2)
.var list3= List()
.eval list3.add("a")
.eval list3.add("b")
}
//.eval list3.add("c") // This will give an error
The .define directive defines the symbols that are listed after the .define keyword (list2 and list3). The directives inside {…} are executed in a new scope so any local defined variables can't be seen from the outside. After executing the inner directives, the defined values are locked and inserted as constants in the outside scope.
The inner directives are executed in 'function mode', which is a bit faster and requires less memory than ordinary execution. So if you are using for loops to do some heavy calculations, you can optimize performance by placing your loop inside a define directive. As the name 'function mode' suggests, directives placed inside functions are also executed in ‘function mode’. In ‘function mode’ you can only use script directives (like .var, .const, .eval, .enum, etc) while byte output generating directives (like lda #10, byte $22, .word $33, .fill 10, 0) are not allowed.
|
 |
