World: r3wp

Cross-platform is not a problem for me - I can use Mono if I need 
to.

It would also be a plus to have proper WinCE support, as many of 
the people I support are running it in their cell phones. J2ME would 
be good for many others.

For instance, there are many REBOL desktop and network apps that 
would be much more useful with ActiveSync support (Qtask).

The ActiveSync APIs use COM.

Any proper WinCE app that stores data locally would need some kind 
of syncronization support too.

I would love to replace Outlook with Qtask, but can't without ActiveSync 
support.

The ActiveSync protocols have been reverse-engineered by the SynCE 
project team (http://www.synce.org/index.php/SynCE-Wiki). It should 
be possible to make an implementation in REBOL.

Reichart should pay someone to implement ActiveSync support.

Well, SynCE will help if I am connecting to WinCE from a non-Windows 
machine, but the ActiveSync program is already doing the connection 
on Windows, so I will have to integrate with that. Same on the WinCE 
side.

>> r: does [recycle set 'a "11111111" system/stats]
>> r
== 4460038
>> r: does [recycle set 'a 11111111 system/stats]
>> r
== 4460038

>> r: does [recycle set 'a ["1 1 1"] system/stats]
>>r
== 4460518
>> r: does [recycle set 'a [1 1 1] system/stats]
>> r
== 4460518

so.. is it fair to conclude that integers take up the same amout 
of memory as strings?

>> a: 1
== 1
>> to-binary a
== #{31}
>> a
== 1
>> a: "1"
== "1"
>> to-binary a
== #{31}
>> a
== "1"

It may be fairer and more accurate to say REBOL has some subtle optimizations 
in its memory allocation.

Watch, for example, the memory drop here.....you'll see that as the 
block 'x grows, REBOL allocates space in anticipation, so a single 
insert into 'x does not always change the stats.
x: copy []
st: system/stats
loop 500 [
    print [(st - system/stats) length? x]
    append x length? x
    recycle
   ]

>>r: does [recycle set 'a [#{7FFFFFFF}] system/stats]
>> r
== 4559204

>> r: does [recycle set 'a [6442450943] system/stats]
>> r
== 4562852

the first is the binary version of the second integer..  safe to 
say that a binary uses more mem than the integer?

Im trying to determine the most memory efficient method of storing 
a large block of numbers (can be integers, bits.. i dont care, as 
long as i can convert it to an integer in the end)

Also cosidering the best storage for finding a particular binary 
or integer in the block?

A binary does use more than an integer, but the above doesn't prove 
it. You're only checking one value. As Sunanda wrote, rebol's memory 
allocations are not obvious. It uses pools of memory, which allows 
reuse of memory.

why would a binary use more mem.. shouldn't it be the other way around?

Gabriele has explained it previously, something like this:
Values life in "value slots". Words point to value slots.

Some values live entirely in their value slot -- chars, integers: 
ie the short ones with a determinate maximum length.

Other values live in memory pointed to the by value slot -- such 
as strings.

There is memory allocation optimisation both for value slots (as 
seen in the growing block of integers example above), and elsewhere.

So a single allocation is not enough to deriive the underlying algorithm.

And a binary is just a type of string, so yes, the value slot contains 
a pointer to the actual data.

Value slots are always 16 bytes long in current REBOL versions (Says 
Gabriel).

It seems reasonable to assume this will increase if REBOL goes 64bit 
(speculates Sunanda)

so then a block of integers  ie: [1234432   345   45345   5435   
2345  5435353]  .. .
is the most efficient way to store?

Storing a bunch of integers in a binary should be more efficient, 
only one value slot used, and each integer takes only 32bits.

I guess that's my point.. i need to use 32 bits to store a single 
integer??

What precision do you need in your integers ?

You could make 8-bit or 16-bit, or ... 13-bit integers if you wanted. 
It's more work, but possible.

i can use bits.. where 00= 0   01 = 1  10 = 2 .. 11 = 3  etc.

Yes, how many bits per integer are needed ? What's the highest number 
? Any negative numbers allowed ?

( 0 = 0 rather)

(ie. how many unique integer values are needed ?)

no negatives..  and a MAX of 32 bits is more than enough for the 
largest number

A value slot is 16 bytes, so  a single integer takes 16 bytes -- 
it has to live in a value slot.

16 bytes.. that seems large

I guess that's where the number of words limitation kicks in?

No, the slot size is fixed so it can fit a whole lot of different 
types in it, eg. time! values.

word limit is something else -- to do with the number of unique (across 
all contexts) words. Not related to value slots as far as I know.

Im thinking I should do this in Assembly  ;)

Well, what is your largest number ?

ahh .. ok..  that's a fairly heavy price to pay (relatively speaking) 
just so I can store non binary data types

That dictates the number of bits needed to represent all your numbers.

For compact representation of large integer sets, I often uses the 
format:
    [10x4 50 76x1000] 
ir REBOL pairs! (each taking 1 value slot) meaning
     [10 11 12 13  50  76 77 78 ..... 1076]
This works for me for large blocks of semi-sparse integers.

There is a script for handling this format at REBOL.org -- look for 
rse-ids.r

Im guessing my largest number is probably around 2 million... approx

You have to know what your largest number is. Otherwise your software 
will break with overflow errors.

well..  say 21 bits

Well 24bits (3 bytes) --> 2^24 = 16777216 unique values.

Ok, so you could pack each 21 (or 24) bits into a binary.

No wastage.

so is that a block of binaries then?