HOW TO USE THIS REFERENCE GUIDE

Throughout this manual certain conventional notations are used to describe the syntax (programming sentence structure) of BASIC commands or statements and to show both the required and optional parts of each BASIC keyword. The rules to use for interpreting statement syntax are as follows:

1. BASIC keywords are shown in capital letters. They must appear where shown in the statement, entered and spelled exactly as shown.
2. Items shown within quotation marks (" ") indicate variable data which you must put in. Both the quotation marks and the data inside the quotes must appear where shown in each statement.
3. Items inside the square brackets ([ ]) indicate an optional statement parameter. A parameter is a limitation or additional qualifier for your statements. If you use an optional parameter you must supply the data for that optional parameter. In addition, ellipses (...) show that an optional item can be repeated as many times as a programming line allows.
4. If an item in the square brackets ([ ]) is UNDERLINED, that means that you MUST use those certain characters in the optional parameters, and they also have to be spelled exactly as shown. 5. Items inside angle brackets (< >) indicate variable data which you provide. While the slash (/) indicates that you must make a choice between two mutually exclusive options.

EXAMPLE OF SYNTAX FORMAT:

EXAMPLES OF ACTUAL STATEMENTS:

    10 OPEN 2,8,6,"0:STOCK FOLIO,S,W"
    20 OPEN 1,1,2,"CHECKBOOK"
    30 OPEN 3,4

When you actually apply the syntax conventions in a practical situation, the sequence of parameters in your statements might not be exactly the same as the sequence shown in syntax examples. The examples are not meant to show every possible sequence. They are intended to present all required and optional parameters.