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| SECTION 1 PART B SUBPART 1 | Basic Tutorials - Part 3 |
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 BASIC Tutorials - installment 3
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 Howdy! 8-) So what do you want to learn this week starting BASIC programmers?
 I thought I'd go over a few BASICs (pun) and some useful routines. If you 
 want to have basic tutorials on anything else then mail the fanzine and I'll 
 be happy to type them up for you! 

 Recap:

  - Variables are memory stores.
  - Variables with text in are proceeded with a  $
  - Variables to store numbers are usually proceeded with a  %
  
 So the following program would take your age and store it in age%.

 PRINT "Age:"
 INPUT age%

 A new format of the INPUT command:
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 In the previous example we displayed the question we wanted to ask 'Age:'
 with a print routine. We can simplify that whole previous routine into one
 INPUT command, look at this:

 INPUT "Age:",age%

 Basically what this means is that after the prompt 'Age:' is displayed then
 read in the age and place it into age%. Look at the following:

 INPUT "Name:",n$

 Common-sense should tell you that that command would display 'Name:' on the
 screen and then place whatever you type into n$. 

 Looks so simple, doesn't it?
 
 Other commands which are useful to use:
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 We can use other commands in conjunction with the INPUT and PRINT commands
 to make it all look prettier. The first command is  CLS  . Looking at it it
 means:

	CLear the Screen    = CLS

 That will clear the screen of all of its text and leave you with a clean
 screen to place text on.

 There is also another command which you will find useful. It is called  COLOR
 and yes I know it is spelt a bit strangely but thats the American way of
 spelling it (although I assume 90% of readers are American). 8-) Anyway
 this command is followed by a number which dictates what colour the text will
 be shown as:
	0 - Black                       
	1 - Blue                        9 - Bright Blue
	2 - Green                       10- Bright Green 
	3 - Cyan                        11- Bright Cyan
	4 - Red\Brown                   12- Bright Red
	5 - Dull Purple                 13- Bright Purple
	6 - Brown                       14- Bright Yellow
	7 - Dark White                  15- Bright White
	8 - Dark Gray

 You can place a COLOR command before any PRINT or INPUT command to change
 the colour of its text. Look at this:

 CLS
 COLOR 15
 PRINT "Details Program"
 PRINT ""
 COLOR 6
 INPUT "Age?",age%
 COLOR 14
 INPUT "Name?",n$
 CLS
 COLOR 15
 PRINT age%
 PRINT n$

 As with the INPUT command the PRINT command can also have variables 
 attached to it for it to print. For example if the previous program could
 actually say  'Hello [your name] You are [age] years old.', it would be
 better. It can! Look at this example of the print command.

 PRINT "Hello, ",n$
 print "You are ",age%," years old"

 If you can get your head around the working of this then you'll be a master
 in no time.

 In Closing
 ~~~~~~~~~~

 I'll be going into explaining the last piece of code in the next fanzine.
 It'll be part 4 of the Basic Tutorials. Part 5 will cover location, loops
 and logic. After that more tutorials will follow but in more specific
 areas of BASIC.

 Cheerio






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*	EDITOR'S NOTE:
*	This article was originally printed in Peter Cooper's BASIX Fanzine, 
*	Issue #4 from January 1996.