[Oberon] Memory array [WAS: Re: NAstrobe for RISC5 on Pepino]

[Skulski, Wojciech]

Paul:

>> could you please remind me how I can handle the following situation. ...
>> WizMemArrayPtr := New (W5300_address, W5300_size);
>> ...It would be a very clean and natural programming. But it is not
>> supported. What are the alternatives? I guess SYSTEM. But why?

>Because it's not typed.

Do you mean that SYSTEM is not typed? This I can see. But what is the problem? I am describing a use case which is very common. 

In any hardware project there are always buffers, arrays, and individual registers which must live at fixed addresses. The sizes of such objects are known. Would it be nice to provide a universal mechanism to allocate an array or a variable at a given address, without going through SYSTEM contortions? Alternatively, maybe SYSTEM can provide a clean syntax to handle such cases? 

What I mean is a clean language construct to handle such "dirty" cases, which are unavoidable if one is programming the hardware drivers.

Thank you,
Wojtek