VTech E Power User Manual download pdf (Page 38)

BASIC COMPUTER TUTORIAL

EXAMPLE OF A BASIC PROGRAM

You and Teresa went to the local video store to rent some movies. Teresa brought back

12 but 4 were too scary for you so you returned them. On that trip you came home with

7 new movies. How many are you going to watch this afternoon? You could work this

out yourself, but here is a BASIC program that can do the arithmetic for you.

Type in:

10 PRINT 12-4+7 press ENTER

20 END press ENTER

Now type RUN and press ENTER. What happens? The answer, 15, appears on the screen.

In BASIC, you write a series of line-numbered statements that tell the PRECOMPUTER

POWER PAD™ PLUS what to do. The first statement, numbered 10, tells the computer

to work out the sum of three numbers and then PRINT the answer on the screen. The

next statement, number 20, tells the computer that this is the end of the program and that

it can stop RUNNING. However, the last statement is not necessary in this program because

you only want to print out the sum of 3 numbers, therefore, it could be removed.

Remove that last line by typing 20 and press ENTER. Now type RUN and press ENTER. What

happens? You get the same results.

Suppose you typed:

10 PRONG 12-4+7 press ENTER

Now type RUN and press ENTER. What happens? You get a strange message, “? SYNTAX

ERROR IN 10” in the display. That means you made a mistake in BASIC grammar and

this is the PRECOMPUTER POWER PAD™ PLUS unit’s way of telling you this. You need

to EDIT the line or re-type it, changing “PRONG” to “PRINT” and then RUN the program

again to get the correct answer.

You can use PRECOMPUTER POWER PAD™ PLUS as a calculator in arithmetic statements

like the one above by not using a line number.

Just type:

PRINT 12-4+7 press ENTER

The answer will appear on the screen.

Another short cut is that you could use the “?” symbol to stand for the word “PRINT.” When

you are using BASIC as a calculator in “command mode”, think of the question mark as

meaning “What is 12-4+7?” When you are using the question mark as a “PRINT” command

in a program, the computer will replace the “?” with the word “PRINT” for you.

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VTech E Power User Manual Page 38