Commodore CBM - BASIC Word Abbreviations

The cursor contrais perform their normal movements in the alternate mode.
However. some of the shifted cursor contrais display a lower-case alphabetic
symbol instead of their normal symbol. For instance.
CLEAR is normally displayed
as a :J . but in alternate mode it is displayed as a lower-case s. The chart below
shows the change in the cursor symbols.
Cll! 1
SCREEH S
HOME
~t
~
~
FF
RVS r
"
I~I (unaltered)
I~I (unaltered)
Summary
With a few exceptions. the Alternate Character Set may be summed up as
follows:
1. Value 14 is POKEd into memory location 59468 ta activate the Alter-
nate Character Set.
2. The PET must be in shifted mode ta print the lower-case alphabetics or
special symbols.
3. The Alternate Character Set may be divided into three categories:
a. Upper-case alphabetics: keys A through Z
b. Graphie symbols: ail punctuation (except the four unique keys in
the top right corner.
as previously explained)
c. Lower-case alphabetics and cursor control keys
BASIC WORD ABBREVIATIONS
You learned early in this book that the BASIC command PRINT could always
be entered from the keyboard by the abbreviation 7. the question mark character.
This was expanded by
PET BASIC to the full word PRINT at the first and ail subse-
quent listings.
Most of the BASIC commands. statements. and functions can similarly
be abbreviated by the first
two characters of the keyword. with the second
character entered
in shifted mode. With the standard character set. the sec-
ond character appears as a graphic character. For example. the abbreviation for
LIST appears
as:
L -',
Select the Alternate Character Set with a POKE 59468,14 ta have the second
character appear
as a lower-case letter. e. g .. :
Li
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