[Coco] WHAT MANNER OF UNHOLY WIZARDRY IS THIS?

[William Astle]

On 14-04-20 06:44 PM, Arthur Flexser wrote:
> Bill, putting the drive number before rather than after the filename has
> always been a legal alternate syntax in Disk Basic.

Huh. Who knew. It's the first I've ever heard of it, too. But I just 
looked at the code in the original DECB ROM and sure enough, it 
specifically checks for that case. However, the check only works for a 
single digit drive number and the number can only be 0, 1, 2, or 3.

HDBDOS does eliminate that particular "feature". The existing code 
couldn't possibly work with drive numbers more than one digit long and 
given that the prefix drive number syntax is not documented anywhere 
official, it was a prime candidate as somewhere to clobber for including 
a patch for something else.

I suspect this one is possibly a holdover from other systems that used a 
prefix drive letter or something like that.

There are a few other interesting variations accepted by DECB, too, so 
this isn't particularly surprising. For instance, the manual says to use 
"D" for a random file but "R" is also accepted. One can also prefix 
coordinates for various graphics commands with @. You can also include 
random text after the line number on a GOTO or GOSUB without provoking a 
syntax error. You can also leave out the THEN keyword on an IF statement 
if the command you want to run is GOTO or GOSUB.

>
> Art
>
>
> On Sun, Apr 20, 2014 at 8:07 PM, Bill Pierce <ooogalapasooo at aol.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> Juan
>> Niether can RSDOS and never has as far as I know... the correct syntax is:
>> LOAD"FILENAME/EXT:n"
>>
>>
>>
>> Bill Pierce
>> "Today is a good day... I woke up" - Ritchie Havens
>>
>>
>> My Music from the Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer 2 & 3
>> https://sites.google.com/site/dabarnstudio/
>> Co-Webmaster of The TRS-80 Color Computer Archive
>> http://www.colorcomputerarchive.com/
>> Co-Contributor, Co-Editor for CocoPedia
>> http://www.cocopedia.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
>> E-Mail: ooogalapasooo at aol.com
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Juan Castro <jccyc1965 at gmail.com>
>> To: CoCo List <coco at maltedmedia.com>
>> Sent: Sun, Apr 20, 2014 7:39 pm
>> Subject: [Coco] WHAT MANNER OF UNHOLY WIZARDRY IS THIS?
>>
>>
>> Get the DSK image "ADV2" in this page.
>> http://sites.mpc.com.br/ric/cp400/eadv.htm
>> Now load the BASIC program called "#" and list it, don't run.
>> It gets the address of the end of the BASIC program, subracts 6 and
>> UMPS TO IT! And an INTERACTIVE DISK MENU POPS OUT OF NOWHERE!
>> What is going on here?
>> (Unrelatedly, it seems HDB-DOS can't LOAD or LOADM files with
>> n:FILENAME.EXT" syntax. It gives me a ?FN ERROR.)
>> Juan
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