If I'm making a game in TI-BASIC which takes user input and updates the position of an onscreen cursor, two options which come to mind are to store the position as a list of length 2 or as a single variable. For instance, my minesweeper game stores the position as {Row, Column} in a list (LCRSR) and retrieves the current row or column as needed (LCRSR(1) or LCRSR(2)).

However, I was thinking it might be faster to store the info for both values in a single variable such that if the cursor position is stored in variable A, int(A) = Row and 100fPart(A) = Column. (e.g. A=1.01 when Row=1 and Column=1).

Does anyone know which option is faster when the program is running? I would assume using a variable is probably faster since it takes up less space in RAM, but I kind of prefer the list approach because it feels less confusing to actually write.
Without doing any testing, I believe that using the list would be significantly faster than using a single variable. When you store a coordinate using the integer and fractional parts of a single real variable, more operations are required to get and set the individual components.

For example, setting the column (A is the composite coordinate, and C is the new column):

Code:
iPart(A)+C/100->A
vs.
Code:
C->LCRSR(2


It would be even more efficient to use two separate real variables to store the row and column, since you would only need a single character to reference the row or column, versus 4-7 for the list.
  
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