Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> No, there was FOR/NEXT. I don't think there was a WHILE.  The THEN was a 
> line number, not a statement.

  Right.

  Oh, and forget about indentation. Most "editors" back then had no such
concept. Following deeply nested loops and conditionals was a task in
itself...

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 26/04/2012 01:14 PM, Warp wrote:
> Darren New<dne### [at] sanrrcom>  wrote:
>> No, there was FOR/NEXT. I don't think there was a WHILE.  The THEN was a
>> line number, not a statement.
>
>    Right.
>
>    Oh, and forget about indentation. Most "editors" back then had no such
> concept. Following deeply nested loops and conditionals was a task in
> itself...

You can't nest IF statements at all.

In every BASIC dialect *I* saw, loop bodies are /automatically/ 
indented, and you can't turn this off.

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On 26/04/2012 01:07 PM, Francois Labreque wrote:

>> Almost every dialect had a strange DATA construct. A DATA statement is
>> followed by a comma-separated list of decimal numbers. The READ
>> statement fetches the next code into the specified variable. The RESTORE
>> command resets to the first DATA statement. If you want to write machine
>> code, you invariably have to write a BASIC program such as
>>
>> 10 FOR X = 1 TO 13
>> 20 READ D
>> 30 POKE (23874+X), D
>> 40 NEXT X
>> 50 DATA 45,84,27,45,95,13,75,65,42,84,13,10,59
>
> Think punch cards.

That's just scary.

But incidentally, most BASIC dialects had a way to read data off tape as 
well. Usually a READ$() function, or sometimes you had to play with CMD 
(change main device) so that your INPUT and PRINT commands now address a 
file rather than the screen...

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