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MBASIC WIERDNESS
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Stephen Mitchell
Sep 18, 1995, 3:00:00 AM9/18/95
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Probably time for this thread to come to an end. However,
two comments did seem in order.
First, Andrew Heald <a.h...@irl.cri.nz> writes, apropos of
the fact that MBASIC will create a file directory entry with
lower case characters, rather than forcing the characters to
upper case, if the argument to the SAVE command is lower case:
> MBASIC seems to be the only program that doesn't force this.
Not quite. The SBASIC compiler that came as part of the bundled
software for most Kaypros likewise allowed lower case file names
to be specified as arguments to the CREATE, OPEN, CHAIN, and
EXECUTE commands, and did not not convert them to uppercase,
thereby allowing the creation of, and access to, lower case names
in the CP/M file directory. The SBASIC manual notes this
"feature" and suggests that it could be useful in a large
multi-module CHAINed program where you wanted to ensure that a
naive user did not directly run one of the modules out of order
from the command line (which was possible, since SBASIC was a
native-code compiler and produced stand-alone .COM files).
Unlike MBASIC and SBASIC, CBASIC does convert the filename
arguments to OPEN, CREATE and CHAIN statements to uppercase.
Peter Carless adds:
> The only way to delete the file was to go into MBASIC and
> issue the command KILL "sample.bas"
As somebody else, I think Jay Sage, has already noted, you could
use a disk editor like DU to either erase the directory entry for
the file or convert the name to all upper case, so you could then
deal with it from the command line. But the simplest way, in my
experience, was to use Dave Rand's NEWSWEEP file manager utility.
From within NEWSWEEP you can easily delete and rename files with
lower-case or otherwise improperly-formed names (e.g., having
embedded spaces).
--
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stephen S. Mitchell tel. 703-360-4659
Alexandria, Virginia 73107...@compuserve.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
two comments did seem in order.
First, Andrew Heald <a.h...@irl.cri.nz> writes, apropos of
the fact that MBASIC will create a file directory entry with
lower case characters, rather than forcing the characters to
upper case, if the argument to the SAVE command is lower case:
> MBASIC seems to be the only program that doesn't force this.
Not quite. The SBASIC compiler that came as part of the bundled
software for most Kaypros likewise allowed lower case file names
to be specified as arguments to the CREATE, OPEN, CHAIN, and
EXECUTE commands, and did not not convert them to uppercase,
thereby allowing the creation of, and access to, lower case names
in the CP/M file directory. The SBASIC manual notes this
"feature" and suggests that it could be useful in a large
multi-module CHAINed program where you wanted to ensure that a
naive user did not directly run one of the modules out of order
from the command line (which was possible, since SBASIC was a
native-code compiler and produced stand-alone .COM files).
Unlike MBASIC and SBASIC, CBASIC does convert the filename
arguments to OPEN, CREATE and CHAIN statements to uppercase.
Peter Carless adds:
> The only way to delete the file was to go into MBASIC and
> issue the command KILL "sample.bas"
As somebody else, I think Jay Sage, has already noted, you could
use a disk editor like DU to either erase the directory entry for
the file or convert the name to all upper case, so you could then
deal with it from the command line. But the simplest way, in my
experience, was to use Dave Rand's NEWSWEEP file manager utility.
From within NEWSWEEP you can easily delete and rename files with
lower-case or otherwise improperly-formed names (e.g., having
embedded spaces).
--
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stephen S. Mitchell tel. 703-360-4659
Alexandria, Virginia 73107...@compuserve.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
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