puppybasic intro ch. 02- learning puppybasic

green text is being edited and should not be considered  
relevant to the tutorial. for a while, it will make up  
the bulk of this section.
  
black text has been edited to be more accurate with  
regards to puppybasic.

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learning puppybasic                                                          
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                  an intro to puppybasic                                 
                                                                         
                  chapter 2: learning puppybasic                             
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
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learning puppybasic                                                          
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when learning any programming language, the first thing to look at is a  
good tutorial, if one is available. most tutorials will include some     
variation of a "hello world" program, or a program to simply make the    
computer say "hello, world!" on the screen. the second thing to look at  
when learning a new language is program examples, where "hello, world"   
might be the most simple.                                                
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
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learning puppybasic                                                          
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true to the name, b.a.s.i.c makes pretty easy work of this:                                                       
                                                                         
10 PRINT "hello, world!"  ______________________________________________ 
20 END                    _hello, world!________________________________ 
                          ______________________________________________ 
                          ______________________________________________ 
                          ______________________________________________ 
                          ______________________________________________ 
                                                                         
                                                                         



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learning puppybasic                                                          
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that was the old way, that is, every line required a line number. in     
puppybasic, line numbers really don't work, and aren't needed.
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         



                                                                         
                                                                         
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learning puppybasic                                                          
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here is a more "modern" version of the code:                             
                                                                         
PRINT "hello, world!"                                                    
END                                                                      
                                                                         
not much difference there, of course you'll need a new way to reference 
a position inside the code, but puppybasic has several, don't worry.    
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
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learning puppybasic                                                          
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the PRINT statement, which should probably be called ECHO, like it is in 
dos, "prints" to the screen. of course, before everyone had crt's (or    
lcd's) attached to their computers, the "screen" was a teletype, or an   
electric printer-keyboard combo similar enough to a typewriter, so maybe 
"print" wasn't too odd a thing to call it.                               
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
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learning puppybasic                                                          
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the statement for printing to a printer incidentally, is LPRINT, of      
course this is essentially part of a dos system; not only does windows   
sometimes create problems when using LPRINT, but without windows, LPRINT 
will not print to some newer models of printers (i saw lexmark abandon   
pure-dos compatibility first, though it could have been someone else)    
and of course, will not print to usb printers. (it is possible to access 
some usb devices from dos without running windows. it is very, very      
tricky.)                                                                 
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
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learning puppybasic                                                          
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the END statement simply ends the program. if there is code after the    
END statement, it will not run unless you specifically tell another part 
of the program to go there.                                              
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
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learning puppybasic                                                          
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if you tell the computer to PRINT again, it will print on the next       
line... so the following code:                                           
                                                                         
PRINT "hello, world!"                                                    
PRINT "how are you?"                                                     
END                                                                      
                                       _________________________________ 
would end up like this on the screen:  _hello, world!___________________ 
                                       _how are you?____________________ 
                                       _________________________________ 
                                       _________________________________ 
                                                                         
                                                                         
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learning puppybasic                                                          
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if you don't want it to go to the next line, try putting a semicolon     
outside the quote marks to the line you want to add to:                  
                                                                         
PRINT "hello, world!";                                                   
PRINT "how are you?"                                                     
                                  ______________________________________ 
which will instead produce this:  _hello, world!how are you?____________ 
                                  ______________________________________ 
you can add spaces as you like.   ______________________________________ 
                                  ______________________________________ 
                                  ______________________________________ 
                                                                         
                                                                         
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learning puppybasic                                                          
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you may end up with a lot of "hello" on one screen, or you may simply    
want to start fresh. this command:                                       
                                                                         
CLS                                                                      
                                                                         
stands for "clear screen" and is a common way to start a program.        
                                                                         
CLS                                                                      
PRINT "hello!"                                                           
                                                                         
but you want more fun to really appreciate programming. let's add color. 
                                                                         
                                                                         
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learning puppybasic                                                          
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basic and puppybasic are not limited to text, but text-related functions  
are worth covering first, since they're usually easier to code and since
you can't get away from them all, even if you're writing a gui util. 
                                                                         
changing the color is easy enough, if you know how.                       
let's try this:                                                          
                 _______________________________________________________ 
CLS              _BLUE!_________________________________________________ 
COLOR 1          _______________________________________________________ 
PRINT "BLUE!"    _______________________________________________________ 
                 _______________________________________________________ 
                                                                         
                                                                         
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learning puppybasic                                                          
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and that's what that does. colors are represented by numbers, and in the 
default text-only mode there are about sixteen of them.                  
                                                                         
here's a table:                                                          
                                                                         
0                                                                        
black   1 blue  2 green  3 cyan  4 red  5 magenta  6 brown 7 white       
                                                                         
8       9       10       11      12     13         14      15            
grey    l.blue  l.green  l.cyan  l.red  l.magenta  yellow  bright-white  
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
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learning puppybasic                                                          
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you can even change colors before you go to the next letter:             
COLOR 2                                                                  
PRINT "h";  ____________________________________________________________ 
COLOR 3     _hello______________________________________________________ 
PRINT "e";  ____________________________________________________________ 
COLOR 5     ____________________________________________________________ 
PRINT "l";  ____________________________________________________________ 
COLOR 4     ____________________________________________________________ 
PRINT "l";  ____________________________________________________________ 
COLOR 1     ____________________________________________________________ 
PRINT "o"   ____________________________________________________________ 
                                                                         
                                                                         
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learning puppybasic                                                          
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so you dont get confused when you see people use it, PRINT without any   
string or number or variable just prints a blank line (or stops adding   
to the end of a PRINT statement with a semicolon on the end.)            
                                                                         
                         -= end of chapter 2 =-                          
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
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an intro to puppybasic                                       (chapter 2) 
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