I have noticed that line beginning with a ':' are ignored by EhBASIC. Was this intentional or just a fortunate bug?

It allows a way to comment code sections in program files without incurring the overhead of REM statements.

For instance, when the following is sent to EhBASIC:


All those lines beginning with a colon are ignored.

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Bill

Good observation. It is a usefull but unintentional and undocumented feature. It only works that way in direct mode and allows comments in the source text while these comments will not be loaded to program memory. So a LIST in EhBASIC will not show them.

I wouldn't call it a bug as you are expected to enter a valid statement or line number in direct mode. The colon can be used as usual to separate further statements on the same line.

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6502 sources on GitHub: https://github.com/Klaus2m5

As you say, still useful.

Especially for me as I always keep my source open in Notepad++ and do all my changes there rather than directly on the target. The only thing I might od on the target is change the initial value of a variable or the value of a constant. Since I always define these one to a line to make that very job easier. Once the program is fully developed and sufficiently debugged you can always pack them many per line to save a bit of space if required. However, the biggest space saving comes from being able to comment the source without taking up space on the target.

Perhaps you could update your awesome version of the documentation with a note that outlines the 'feature'.

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Bill

I use a similar but more obvious technique to achieve the same thing. All REM lines in my programs have no line number. On load they will be executed as direct statements (do nothing) and will not be loaded to program memory.

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6502 sources on GitHub: https://github.com/Klaus2m5