Editor and HEX

[Walt Decker]

I figured out the ".".  It takes the place of the underscore(_) in other languages since that character is used as a continuation tag.

The SHIFT + TAB does not work properly in the editor.  It erases everything and leaves an unprintable character.

There should be a REPLACE button on the find/replace common dialog.  Currently it has just FIND and REPLACE ALL.  The Replace Again in the edit menu does nothing.

HELP should be updated to specifically state that numeric variables will not accept HEX notation.  Took me a while to determine that and had to transform a number of hex equates to decimal first.

Also, there should be a NOTE statement indicating that variables are case sensitive.  That is a considerable departure from other BASIC languages.

PS:  What is the difference between v4.5.1 and PRO?

[Chris Iverson]

No numerical constants aside from decimal can be used, but hex can be used if you use the HEXDEC() conversion function.

print hexdec("FF")

You will have to remove any prefixes or suffixes, though. 0xFF won't be recognized, for example.

---

The helpfile page "Variables" does state that variables are case-sensitive. In fact, it states it twice in a row, to reinforce that fact.

Direct quote from the helpfile(emphasis mine):

In Liberty BASIC variables are either string or numeric. A variable name can start with any letter and it can contain both letters and numerals, as well as dots (for example: user.firstname). There is no practical limit to the length of a variable name. The variable names are uppercase and lowercase sensitive, so these are not the same variable:


 supercalifragilisticexpialadocious

 superCaliFragilisticExpialaDocious

As in most versions of BASIC, string variable names end in a "$" character for example:

boast$ = "String variables can contain 2 million characters!"

The boast above is correct. In Liberty BASIC, string variables can be huge, containing as many as 2 million characters.

Unlike some BASICs, Liberty BASIC does not require variables to be declared before they may be used in code. It is importatnt to check the spelling/capitalization of variables, because variable names are case sensitive. If 'Compiler Reporting' is enabled in the options dialog, Liberty BASIC will give an alert in a special pane at the bottom of the editor when a program contains variables with similar names, like (name$ and names$) or (name$ and Name$.)

(Also that typo on 'important' is straight from the helpfile, as well.)

---

The PRO version includes features for project management, source code versioning, an automatic code formatter, a performance profiler/analyzer, and an automated application deployment process for compiling and distributing executables.