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language, perhaps recalling the rigors of
Well don’t be! In the first place, BASIC may well be the easiest language you could learn: it has a vary limited vocabulary, a simple but precise grammar, and its dialects - unlike those of English - usually different from each other only in minor detail. Without programming, a computer is a useless collection of chips and wire - why should we think of it as something special? Anyway, computers are here to stay - let’s accept them with good grace.
nFirst steps
The first things that a beginner learns to do are to list a pro- gram and to print a character string. Certainly these are the easiest operations one can do, but even they may depend on what computer you have. In Microsoft BASIC, we can list all the steps in a program by entering LIST. This lists them on the CRT screen; if we want to print them on a printer, we prefix the command with an L (enter LLIST).
The Microsoft BASIC command for outputting information is PRINT. Like the LIST command, this displays the information on the CRT screen so we have to add an L (+ LPRINT) if we want to use the printer. Just put whatever you want to print between quotes and after LPRINT (anything enclosed in quotes is called a character string). For example, we would use LPRINT “Hello!” to output “Hello!” to the printer. We’ll see later how to LPRINT things other than character strings.
We started with Microsoft BASIC because it is the most wide- ly used version of BASIC around. The programs in this manual are written in Microsoft BASIC so they should run on most com- puters. But if strange things happen when you try to run a pro- gram, check the BASIC manual that came with your computer.
Let’s talk about Apple II computers for a minute. These enormously popular computers use their own brand of BASIC. To use an Apple II, enter the following -
PR#l | PR#l |
LIST | PRINT "Hello! It |
PR#O | PR#O |
The PR#l tells the Apple to send everything to the printer, the LIST or PRINT command sends it, and the PR#O returns
