LBPP Support Types
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Scope

This document defines the types support by LBPP.  Native types are ones that
require no conversion to work with the LBPP functions.  External types are
types that have a define conversion which can therefore can be used through
LBPP.

Native Types

string - The native LBPP string is in many ways superior to most string
         implementations.  This is due to the fact that is a native type and is
         not implemented on top of another type (such as a character array in
         C).  Native strings are not guarenteed to be NULL terminated, have a
         constant time size, and are referenced counted so assigning string
         A to string B will only force a copy if either string A or string B's
         content is modified.  This means that strings can be passed by value
         with a great deal of efficency.

double - A double is a double precision real number.  A double precision number
         was decided to be used as the native number representation due to the
         fact that it offers the greatest deal of flexibility and the fact that
         most CPUs are optimized to support double precision over single
         precision.  Just because the internal representation is a double, does
         not limit LBPP to optimizing variables to really be a integer value.
         This is atleast not guarenteed within second degree scope and when
         functions results are implemented using another type.

handle - A handle is a reference to an open object.  Handles are capable of
         both input and output

Native Type Modifiers

& - pass by reference

External Types

byte
short
integer
long
single
double

External Type Modifiers

&type - reference
type[] - as vector
type[][] - as matrix

Explicit Type Modifiers

$ - string

Statement Argument Modifiers

? - optional
* - repeating from 0-n times
+ - repeating from 1-n times