Commodore 128D - Using the Question Mark to Abbreviate the PRINT Command; Printing Text

separated by a comma. If you don't want all the extra spaces, use a
semicolon (;) in your PRINT statement instead of a comma. The semi
colon tells the computer not to add any spaces between strings and
numeric variables and numeric constants. Numbers and numeric
variables are printed with either a leading space or a minus sign, and
a trailing space. Omitting a semicolon, a comma, or any separators
acts the same as a semi-colon. Type these examples and see what
happens:
PRINT 100;200;300;400;500 111-M HIM
Using the Question Mark to Abbreviate the PRINT
Command
You can use a question mark (?) as an abbreviation for the PRINT
command. Many of the examples in this section use the ? symbol in
place of the word PRINT. In fact, most of the BASIC commands can
be abbreviated. However, when you LIST a program, the keyword
appears in the long version. The abbreviations for BASIC commands
can be found in Appendix K of this Guide.
Printing Text
Now that you know how to print numbers, it's time to learn how to
print text. It's actually very simple. Any words or characters you want
to display are typed on the screen, with a quote symbol at each end
of the string of characters. String is the BASIC name for any set of
characters surrounded by quotes. The quote character is obtained
by pressing SHIFT and the numeral 2 key on the top row of the key
board (not the 2 in the numeric keypad). Try these examples:
? "COMMODORE 128" SEUSE
9 "4*5" nFTIinM
Notice that when you press RETURN, the computer displays the
characters within the quotes on the screen. Also note that the sec
ond example did not calculate 4*5 since it was treated as a string
and not a mathematical calculation. If you want to calculate the
result 4*5, use the following command:
You can PRINT any string you want by using the PRINT command
and surrounding the printed characters with quotes. You can com
bine text and calculations in a single PRINT command like this:
?"4*5= "4*5!
29 USING C128 MODE—Getting Started in BASIC