Some of the purchasers of my Double Precision Package (DPP) extension of the Nascom ROM BASIC (marketed by myself at _ ________ __, London ____ and also by Business & Leisure and the Microvalue group as “MathsPak”) have pointed out that it does not support the INPUTing or READing of double precision constants. As things stand, double precision constants can only be entered as a numerical constant in an expression to be evaluated by a call to the DPP. This is inconvenient when it is required to enter a large quantity of double precision conctants.

Although I now recognise this to have been an error on my part, it was originally a conscious decision to leave out INPUT and READ facilities as non-essential when trying to minimise the memory requirements of the package. I had intended that INPUT and READ could be implemented in BASIC rather than as part of the M/C package and thus would occupy no space when not required. However, the BASIC routane required is rather longer than I anticipated and it would probably, with hindsight, have been better to include it in the DPP from the start. Still, for those of you who wish to see such a routine, here it is:

(continued elsewhere!)