On 24 April 2017 at 18:27, Dilwyn Jones <dil...@evans1511.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
> When SBASIC was first mooted, I remember that there was at the time > discussion that other BASICs gave variables default zero value rather than > stopping with an error - "why couldn't the QL do this?" > > Don't know if that influenced Tony Tebby to make SBASIC variables behave > in this way or not, or was that just coincidence? > I've been struggling with this issue too when adapting the Spectrum's BASIC for BASICODE, which was largely based on M$ BASIC. This allowed default values for variables, which broke computers like the Spectrum and BBC. The official BASICODE spec required proper initialisation of variables but this was a common mistake among programmers that went undetected many times because of poor testing before airing (obviously they used a C64 as testing machine ;)). Since my adapted BASIC was expected to be used mainly to run existing programs I decided to allow defaults (and leave out syntax checks at entry too). So, default variable values might probably be a good thing to run BASIC programs converted from other platforms, but a bad thing when developing your own. -- *Jan Bredenbeek* | Hilversum, NL | j...@bredenbeek.net _______________________________________________ QL-Users Mailing List
