HOW TO USE THIS REFERENCEGUIDE
Throughout this manual certain conventional notations are used to de-
scribe the syntax (programming sentence structure) of BASIC commands
or statements and to show both the required and optional parts of each
BASIC keyword. The rules to use for interpreting statement syntax are as
follows:
1. BASIC keywords are shown in capital letters. They must appear
where shown in the statement, entered and spelled exactly as shown.
2. Items shown within quotation marks (" ") indicate variable data
which you must put in. Both the quotation marks and the data
inside the quotes must appear where shown in each statement.
3. Items inside the square brackets ([ ]) indicate an optional state-
ment parameter. A parameter is a limitation or additional qualifier
for your statements. If you use an optional parameter you must
supply the data for that optional parameter. In addition, ellipses
( . . . ) show that an optional item can be repeated as many times
as a programming line allows.
4. If an item in the square brackets ([ ]) is UNDERLINED,that means
that you MUST use those certain characters in the optional pa-
rameters, and they also have to be spelled exactly as shown.
5. Items inside angle brackets «» indicate variable data which you
provide. While the slash ( / ) indicates that you must make a choice
between two mutually exclusive options.
EXAMPLE OF SYNTAX FORMAT:
OPEN<file-num> ,<device> [,<address>], ["<drive>: <file-
name>] [,<mode>]"
EXAMPLES OF ACTUAL STATEMENTS:
10 OPEN 2,8,6,"0:STOCK FOLlO,S,W"
20 OPEN 1,1,2,"CHECKBOOK"
30 OPEN 3,4
When you actually apply the syntax conventions in a practical situa-
tion, the sequence of parameters in your statements might not be
exactly the same as the sequence shown in syntax examples. The
examples are not meant to show every possible sequence. They are
intended to present all required and optional parameters.
INTRODUCTION xi
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