Sharp PC-1500 Instruction Manual page 25

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The cost o f a widget is stored in variable X. Assuming a 6.5% sales
t~x. wh~t
is the
purchase price o f the widget? :
x
=
x
*
1.065
Of course,. we could have . w ritten this example as P
=
X
*
1.065 in o rder to leave X
unchanged. If we had stored the tax rate in a variable T, we could have said X
=
X
*
T or
P
=
X *T.
Until now,
\•Je
have been using single letters as variable names. This provided us w ith 26
variables (A th rough Z). In actuality, SHARP allows the use of over 950 variable names fo r single
numbers. An
ad~ditional
group of over 950 1Jariables may be used to store up to 16 characters each.
Finally (as
if
that \vercn't enough), using more advanced techniques, users may create var-iables
v1hich hold as many numbers or characters as desired, limited only by the amount of memory
available in the computer.
The naming-scheme for variables is simple
and
easy to learn . Names of numeric variables
{ones used to ho' l d numbers) may be chosen usin!1 the following rules:
- The name may be a letter; A through Z .
- The name may be a letter, followed by a single digit (O through 9) or by another letter.
Thus. the following are valid names for numeric variables:
S, 0 1,
TX ,
MM, Z9,
RO, E.
NOTE: Due to conflicts with abbreviations which have other meanings in the BASIC language,
SHARP does not allow the use of these var iable names: LF, IF, LN, Pl, TO.
Names of character variables {those used to hold characters) follow the same rules as above
except that the name ends with a$ (dollar sign}. The$ alerts SHARP to the fact that the variable
holds character information. The following are examples of valid character variable names:
T$, P2$, T7S, AAS, YRS, XS, ZHS, B5S.
NOTE: Due to conflicts with words which are part of the BASIC language, SHARP does not allow
the use of these variable names: LFS, IFS, LNS, PIS, TDS.
It is importarnt to understand that a v.:iriable A and a variable AS are two different variables, the
first one can only hold a number and the second one can only hold characters. As we shall see
later, SHARP's BASIC includes instructions to convert characters to numbers and numbers to
characters.
To store characters in character variables i.ve use a v.:iriation of our friend the Assignment
Statement:
ch;:iracter.variable·name
=
"characters ''
As an example type the following:
OS
=
"DAVY JONES"
Now recall the contents of OS by tyring (][)
rn
I
ENTER
I
DAVY JONES
23
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