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documentation, particularly for programming, you should not rely on the information found here, as it will be woefully out of date.

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 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-Type Suffixes──────────────────────────┐
   │  !  Single-precision                 %  Integer                     │
   │  #  Double-precision                 &  Long-integer                │
   │  $  String                                                          │
   └─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
   ┌─────Mathematical Operators─────┐  ┌─────────────Special─────────────┐
   │  *  Multiplication symbol      │  │  '  Comment line (single quote) │
   │  -  Minus sign                 │  │  ;  Controls PRINT and INPUT    │
   │  /  Division symbol (slash)    │  │       statement output          │
   │  =  Relational operator or     │  │  ,  Controls PRINT and INPUT    │
   │       assignment symbol        │  │       statement output          │
   │  >  Greater than               │  │  :  Separates multiple state-   │
   │  +  Plus sign                  │  │       ments on a single line    │
   │  .  Decimal point              │  │  ?  INPUT statement prompt      │
   │  <  Less than                  │  │  _  Line continuation underscore│
   │  \  Integer division symbol    │  │       (reserved for             │
   │       (backslash)              │  │       compatibility with other  │
   │  ^  Exponentiation symbol      │  │       versions of Basic but not │
   │       (up arrow or caret)      │  │       supported by QBasic)      │
   └────────────────────────────────┘  └─────────────────────────────────┘