Topic       : The GFA-Basic Compendium
Author      : GFA Systemtechnik GmbH
Version     : GFABasic.HYP v2.98 (12/31/2023)
Subject     : Documentation/Programming
Nodes       : 899
Index Size  : 28056
HCP-Version : 3
Compiled on : Atari
@charset    : atarist
@lang       : 
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@help       : Help
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@width      : 75
@hostname   : STRNGSRV
@hostname   : CAB     
@hostname   : HIGHWIRE
@hostname   : THING   
View Ref-FileThis first section begins with an examination of the command INKEY$, which
takes a single character from the keyboard. Next, the family of INPUT commands
is examined, along with the related commands LINE INPUT, FORM INPUT, and FORM
INPUT AS. The discussion of output capabilities begins with the most simple
instruction, PRINT, and goes on to extended versions such as PRINT AT and PRINT
USING. CRSCOL, CRSLIN, and POS() are used to report on the current cursor
position, and TAB(), HTAB, and VTAB are used to control it. At the end of this
section, the KEYxxx commands are considered, these being a family of commands
for the interrogation of the keyboard, and its configuration while a program is
running.

Memo: Internally GFABASIC uses a 4kb disk caching scheme. How does this work?
      All reads/writes are round to 4096 bytes. If you read one byte from a
      file, it will actually read 4096 bytes and any futher reads up to the
      end of the 4kb buffer will be read from ram. The same applies to writes,
      a 4kb buffer is created and it only purges the cache when its full. This
      speeds up disk reads and writes, especially with floppy disks.

      This disk caching scheme only applies to disk files. It is not used on
      devices like MIDI and serial ports, or the console even if one uses
      OPEN on these devices.

      A warning about files OPEN for output:
      You must make sure you CLOSE these files before your program exits or
      data could be lost. CLOSE will force any cached data to be written,
      before closing the file. If you let the operating system close these
      files at pterm(), any cached data will be lost and these files might be
      truncated.