I see. Well, reading the number of elements is easy enough in POV script too,
although it's slow. I really wish POV had dynamic arrays. But that's another
story.
So, Ron, how's that update coming along? Or have you posted a version that fixes
the malloc bug?

Margus

Nathan Kopp wrote:
> 
> Actually, the syntax of mesh2 more closely resembles the internal
> representation of the mesh object (in fact, it is almost exactly the same
> as the internal representaion).  And as was mentioned, the reason the
> number of elements is required is for parsing reasons.  One other option
> is for the parser to read the mesh twice, only counting items the first
> time.  But, obviously, that would cause parse times to increase.  Another
> option would be to allocate space, then re-allocate if the first guess
> was too big.  Of course, you'd always have some extra allocated because
> you probably wouldn't guess the exact amount.  You could then re-allocate
> an array of the exact size and copy the data, but that means having two
> copies of the data in memory at parse time, which is not a good idea for
> large meshes.
> 
> Finally, mesh2 (as indicated by Ron) was designed to be generated by
> comptuters.  Humans should probably still write using the original
> mesh syntax.
> 
> P.S. Sorry I took so long to reply.  I just moved to a new apartment and
> the phone company took their time getting the phone working.
> 
> -Nathan

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