Classic Computer Magazine Archive COMPUTE! ISSUE 53 / OCTOBER 1984 / PAGE 10

Tokenized BASIC

I own a Commodore 64 and would like to know if there is any way of converting tokenized BASIC into regular BASIC. What do I have to do?

Philip Wright

Most computers store BASIC statements and commands as tokens. A command such as PRINT (five characters, or bytes, long) is converted into a number (one byte) which the computer can later understand to mean PRINT. This saves memory space. As you enter a BASIC program, it is compacted into tokens. Regular BASIC is tokenized BASIC, but if what you need is a file that contains every letter of every command in ASCII, there is an easy way to do this on Commodore computers. With the program in the computer's memory, type in the following lines:

OPEN 2, 8, 2, "program name, S, W" : CMD2 : LIST CLOSE2

You can insert the name of the file you would like created instead of "program name." After typing the lines and hitting RETURN, you will have a sequential file on your disk that can be read by most word processors. All the letters to commands such as PRINT will be contained in that file.