Karll's Array Suite                                                         

EPIC supports a large number of different data types.  Among the least used,
and least understood, are Karll's arrays.  This is mostly due to the lack of
publicized documentation for them.  No more.

IrcII has long supported an array type.  These are best identified as hash
arrays (or associative arrays, for Perl hackers).  However, Karll's arrays
are different, more in line with the traditional notion of an array.  Due to
how EPIC stores information, these arrays are not like normal variables or
hashes, and require special function to access and manipulate them.

Arrays are indexed sequentially, starting with 0 (zero).  An array is
created when item 0 in a previously nonexistent array is defined:

   $setitem(booya 0 random data)

This sets element 0 of array "booya" to the text string "random data".
Further items may be added sequentially; the next new element in the array
must be 1, and anything above 1 will result in an error.  Existing array
elements may be freely overwritten:

   $setitem(booya 0 other data)

Now element 0 of array "booya" contains the string "other data".  Any item
may be deleted from the array.  If the deleted element is not the last one
in the array (the one with the highest item number), all items after it
are shifted down by one; this prevents an array from having "holes" in it.

   $setitem(booya 1 new data)
   $delitem(booya 0)

This first adds a new element, then deletes the first element.  The result
is an array that is one item in size.  Item 1 become item 0.

One powerful feature of arrays not present in hashes is the ability to
search through the array elements for random data.  The simplest methods are
probably already familiar to you.  They operate in much the same manner as
the $match() and $rmatch() functions.  Given that some array "blah" held
the following items (in order, from 0):

   james@merlin.ocslink.com  nelson@nemesis.acronet.net
   foobar@blah.booya.com     jbriggs@bigscreen.drivein.com

One could then use $matchitem() to find the element that best matches an
arbitrary input pattern.  Similarly, if an array contained a set of wildcard
patterns, $rmatchitem() could find which one best matched some non-wildcard
string.

The most powerful searching feature is $finditem().  Like the matching
functions, it runs through an array looking for an item that matches the
input string.  However, it looks for an exact match, and is sensitive to
case.  This function uses a binary search algorithm, and is quite fast.

The other feature of note is an array's ability to be sorted on the fly.
All array elements have an item number (the order in which it was added) and
an index number (it's sorted position in the array).  Array elements are
fetched by item number with $getitem() and by index number with $igetitem().
The result is that you can sequentially print out an array's elements using
$igetitem(), and they will be sorted automatically.

There is more to these arrays than is presented here.  Each function used to
access and manipulate them is fully documented in Section 6 of these help
files.  Refer to that section for more information.

