Important Notice

The pages on this site contain documentation for very old MS-DOS software, purely for historical purposes. If you're looking for up-to-date documentation, particularly for programming, you should not rely on the information found here, as it will be woefully out of date.

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BASIC Character Set
 
 The Microsoft BASIC character set includes alphabetic characters (A-Z, a-z),
 numeric characters (0-9 and A-F or a-f for hexadecimal numbers), and
 special characters. Some characters have special meanings in BASIC:
 
   ┌──────────────────────── Data Types Suffixes ────────────────────────┐
   │  !    Single-precision               %    Integer                   │
   │  #    Double-precision               &    Long-integer              │
   │  $    String                         @    Currency                  │
   └─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
   ┌────────── Math Types ──────────┐  ┌──────── Special Meanings ───────┐
   │  *    Multiplication symbol    │  │  '     Denotes a comment line   │
   │  -    Minus sign               │  │        (right single quote or   │
   │  /    Division symbol (slash)  │  │        apostrophe)              │
   │  =    Relational operator or   │  │  ;     Controls output from the │
   │       assignment symbol        │  │        PRINT and INPUT          │
   │  >    Greater than             │  │        statements               │
   │  +    Plus sign                │  │  ,     Controls output from the │
   │  .    Decimal point            │  │        PRINT and INPUT          │
   │  <    Less than                │  │        statements               │
   │  \    Integer division         │  │  :     Separates multiple state-│
   │       symbol (backslash)       │  │        ments placed on one line │
   │  ^    Exponentiation symbol    │  │  ?     Denotes a prompt for     │
   │       (up arrow or caret)      │  │        INPUT                    │
   │                                │  │  _     Denotes a line           │
   │                                │  │        continuation (underscore)│
   │                                │  │        (Note: Illegal in QBX)   │
   └────────────────────────────────┘  └─────────────────────────────────┘