In BASIC, $80-$FF are tokens. And below that, they are themselves. Including the graphics characters. Right? Can we make these lower printables DO things?
Type a batch of them on the command line and press <return>. The interpreter gamely returns "READY." No syntax error, because they simply exist. They don't DO anything.
PI, on the other hand, represents something, so it will error out. As will letters.
Sounds like something useful looking for a purpose.
LIKE WHAT? Well how about variable characters? What if you could use the heart character as a VARIABLE? What if your valid variable set were larger than A-Z0-9?
"Who needs 16,000 two-letter variables?" you say. "They collide with the way shortcut BASIC commands work." Fine. But these critters seem to me to be available for functionality of some kind.
In BASIC, $80-$FF are tokens. And below that, they are themselves. Including the graphics characters. Right? Can we make these lower printables DO things?
Type a batch of them on the command line and press <return>. The interpreter gamely returns "READY." No syntax error, because they simply exist. They don't DO anything.
PI, on the other hand, represents something, so it will error out. As will letters.
Sounds like something useful looking for a purpose.
LIKE WHAT? Well how about variable characters? What if you could use the heart character as a VARIABLE? What if your valid variable set were larger than A-Z0-9?
"Who needs 16,000 two-letter variables?" you say. "They collide with the way shortcut BASIC commands work." Fine. But these critters seem to me to be available for functionality of some kind.
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