80-Bus News

APPEND – Followed by a filename will open the file for subsequent writing onto the end of the current data in the file.

CLOSE – Followed by the appropriate string handler for a file will close the file. Unlike the ROM BASIC routine handler within Nas-Dos, XBASIC allows any number of files to be open at one time subject to memory limitations. Close by itself will close all files that are open at that time.

The file handling within XBASIC is very easy to use. File handling in ROM BASIC is, in my view, cumbersome, although it was reasonably straight forward to store strings but numeric data was more of a pain. In XBASIC, file storage and retrieval of strings and numeric data is made as simple as I think it can be whilst still retaining versatility.

Apart from the previously mentioned bug in the AUTO command, there are at the time of writing (July 1983) several known bugs in the Nas-Dos version of XBASIC which I am told is being looked into by Nascom. The two most drastic ones are:–1) ASC files cannot be saved to disk although they can be saved to tape and 2) attempts to retrieve programs or data from tape proves fruitless. Hopefully these will be corrected shortly.

Conclusions

I find that I now no longer use ROM BASIC because XBASIC does all that ROM BASIC does and more. Certain commands are lacking which need to be added as debugging aids;namely TRACE and FIND routines etc. No doubt these will appear as XBASIC becomes more widely used. Failing that I will have to write the routines myself! My first attempt at writing an OLD command to retrieve NEWed programs resulted in disaster as I could only recover the first line!

All in all I find XBASIC to be a useful interpreter and one that any Nas-Dos user should not be without if only for the added disk commands that make file handling so much easier than in ROM BASIC.

Smallads (continued)