Radio Shack TRS-80 PC-3 Owner's Manual page 218

character and one integer digit. The decimal point may be included, but is not required. Up to 9
'#'
characters may appear to the
right of the decimal point. Following the characteristic portion, the exponentiation character, IE, will be displayed followed by one
position for the sign and two positions for the exponent. Thus, the smallest scientific notation field would be provided by a mask
of"
##"'''
which would print numbers of the form' 2 IE 99'. The largest scientific notation field would be
"##. #########"'''
which would print numbers such as '-1.234567890IE-12':
Statement
10: USING
"###.##"'''
20: PRINT 2
30: PR INT -365.278
2.001E00
-3.651E02
Specifying Alphanumeric Masks
String constants and variables are displayed using the '&' character. Each '&' indicates one character in the field to be displayed.
The string will be positioned at the left end of this field. If the string is shorter than the field, the remaining spaces to the right
will be filled with spaces. If the string is longer than the field, the string will be truncated to the length of the field:
Statement
10: USING "&&&&&&"
20: PR INT "ABC"
30: PRINT "ABCDEFGHI"
Display
ABC
ABCDE
221