To begin with, thanks Thaddy for the 2 solutions proposed:
- the splitting solution does the job
- the procedural-dictionary solution: I will implement it along the lines you suggest. It is much promising, especially for speed. Interestingly, I shall implement it with the code-generator. I wonder how many people would bother in such a case with writing by hand the relevant code ? But with the help of the code-generator, it is an easy task.
You are right, both, when you say that we must accomodate with the compilers constraints, and that some balance between different goals must be found. What I wanted to point out is that with the help of meta-code, i.e. code generators, we are able to produce much larger portions of code, and that we will more frequently reach those limits.
By the way, I was wondering if some code-generator couldn't be usefully integrated within Lz code editor. A simplified version writes for example a case structure, from the items list pasted in a listbox. It seems such feature would be consistent with the RAD nature of Lz.