Delete the first entry of an array.

[Alex Tweedly]

On 27/03/2016 10:42, Peter TB Brett wrote:
> On 26/03/2016 23:40, Alex Tweedly wrote:
>> I haven't found (can't find) a spec for LCB, so I'm not sure exactly
>> what "proper lists" are - but I think maybe not quite what I meant.
>
> There's a spec in the "Guides" tab of the LC8 dictionary -- look for 
> "LiveCode Builder Language Reference".
I see that, but the ONLY mention it makes of lists are:
  - it is one of the Types
  - it holds a "sequence of values"
  - what a ListExpression is.

> There's also a whole LCB dictionary section in the "Dictionary" tab 
> that describes all the syntax relating to working with Lists.
True - but sadly there's no effective way to filter those 523 entries to 
see only the ones that are relevant to a List type.
>
>> I was thinking of "proper arrays" :-) i.e. real, old-fashioned indexed
>> arrays - see Algol, Fortran, etc.
>>
>> So we would have
>> read access in constant time
>> write access in constant time
>> insertion complexity - there is no such thing as insertion :-)
>
> Yes.  We're talking about the same thing.  The LCB "List" datatype is 
> this datastructure.
>
I suspect we're not quite talking about the same thing - I think 'proper 
lists' are something more powerful than I was picturing, but can do 
everything I am looking for - and a whole lot more. If I simply ignore 
all that "more", then they do what I am hoping for.

Many thanks for you patience explaining this.
I'll go start playing with LCB and try to ask harder questions :-)

Thanks
-- Alex.