Designing Games with Game Maker - YoYo Games

indicated section.
ini_section_delete(section) Deletes the indicated section.
Executing programs
Game Maker also has the possibility to start external programs. There are two functions
available for this: execute_program and execute_ shell. The function execute_program starts
a program, possibly with some arguments. It can wait for the program to finish (pausing the
game) or continue the game. The function execute_shell opens a file. This can be any file for
which some association is defined, e.g. an html-file, a word file, etc. Or it can be a program. It
cannot wait for completion so the game will continue.
execute_program(prog,arg,wait) Executes program prog with
arguments arg. wait indicates whether to wait for finishing.
execute_shell(prog,arg) Executes the program (or file) in the shell.
Both functions will not work if the player sets the secure mode in the preferences. You can
check this using the read-only variable:
secure_mode* Whether the game is running in secure mode.
Data structures
This functionality is only available in the Pro Edition of Game Maker.
In games you often need to store information. For example you need to store lists of items
that a person carries or you want to store places that still need to be visited. You can use the
arrays for this. But if you want to do more complicated operations, like sorting the data or
searching for a particular item, you need to write large pieces of GML code which can be slow
to execute.
To remedy this, Game Maker has a number of built-in data structures that can be accessed
through functions. At the moment there are six different types of data structure available:
stacks, queues, lists, maps, priority queues, and grids. Each of these data structures is tuned
for a particular type of use (see below).