I am working in Qbasic 7.1, and I want to be able to use the GET
(graphics) statement with an array that is a field in a record
variable.  i.e.:

  TYPE MyType
    Desc            AS STRING * 20
    Icon(0 to 701)  AS INTEGER
  END TYPE

  SCREEN 12
  DIM MyRecord as MyType
  LINE (10, 10) - (20, 20), 13
  GET (10, 10) - (20, 20), MyRecord.Icon

Qbasic will not compile this.  It expects END-OF-STATEMENT at the dot
following MyRecord.  Obviously, QB71 does not support this
construction; it expects the array used in a GET to be a standalone
array.

I am looking for a workaround.  I would like to trick QB into using
the same memory locations to store two different arrays, one a
standalone and the other a field in a user-defined type (akin to
assigning one pointer or reference variable to another in C or VB),
but I don't know how to do that in QB.  I have also thought about
BSAVing the standalone and BLOADing it into the field array, but this
requires two copies of the data to be in memory, and Windows sometimes
throws a fit when I use BLOAD.

Could it help to use a temporary array to GET, and then copy it to the
type? Something like;

DIM temp(0 to 701) AS INTEGER
GET (10, 10) - (20, 20), temp
FOR i = 0 TO UBOUND(temp)
    MyRecord.Icon(i) = temp(i)
NEXT

I'm sure that would work, but would it not tend to bog the program
down when processing a large number of icons?  I should have clarified
my question by saying that it should execute as quickly as possible. 
Think animation.

Hi Qwiz,

Above process was used for sprite animation/ tiles. But I processed
the loading before the actual game started. I suppose if you have over
64K of graphics this method might cause some headaches in QB as you
have to dynamically reload. I suggest trying out implementing this
approach so you can see how it goes, speed-wise!

Hope it helps!