BASIC Lines

[airship]

Since no one else has posted a question in a long time, I've decided to. I will TRY to ask questions that won't cause a lot of discussion that ends up with me being proven wrong.

Here we go:

1. What's the length of the longest BASIC line that can be ENTERED in C128 80-column mode? 40-column mode?

2. What's the length of the longest line that can be EDITED in 80-column mode? 40-column mode?

[BigDumbDinosaur]

160 and 160.

[hydrophilic]

I suspect Airship is being sneaky so I will give a different answer.

1. 160 and 160 (can be entered)

2. 2000 and 1000 because you can edit a "line" that fills the entire screen!  Of course it must eventually be reduced to the limits of 1 above or you'll get an error upon entry

[airship]

Too easy, huh?

BDD and Hydrophilic are both right. I thought the 'EDIT' might throw you, or the '40-column screen', but the truth is that 160 is the answer to all four questions.

Of course, with funky memory manipulation you can create BASIC lines up to 255 characters long, but you can no longer edit them using the built-in BASIC editor.

Since BDD was first, he gets to write the next trivia question. Go to it, BDD!

[BigDumbDinosaur]

Since BDD was first, he gets to write the next trivia question. Go to it, BDD!

Question about what?  BASIC or M/L?

[RobertB]

Of course, with funky memory manipulation you can create BASIC lines up to 255 characters long...

I use an old AHOY magazine program, Compactor, which crunches down the Basic to 255 characters a line.  Gives pretty good results most of the time.

...but you can no longer edit them using the built-in BASIC editor.

Very true.

              Truly,
              Robert Bernardo
              Fresno Commodore User Group
              http://videocam.net.au/fcug

[RobertB]

I use an old AHOY magazine program, Compactor, which crunches down the Basic to 255 characters a line.

I was not more specific.  Compactor is a C64 program which reads the file from disk and writes the compacted Basic lines back to disk (the drive is always spinning away during the process).  It works on C128 Basic programs, though not all C128 Basic programs respond well when they are compacted by the program (like giving a blank screen).  Most of the time Compactor works, and I have compacted various Basic 8 apps and Loadstar 128 programs for that tiny bit of extra speed that a compacted Basic gives. 

            Truly,
            Robert Bernardo
            Fresno Commodore User Group
            http://videocam.net.au/fcug
            The Other Group of Amigoids
            http://www.calweb.com/~rabel1/