BASIC LOAD Statement

LOAD

TYPE: USB BASIC disk statement

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FORMAT: LOAD filespec

Action: Loads tokenized BASIC program in CAQ format to memory.

• filespec is a string expression containing an optional path and the full file name.
• plusBASIC will attempt to auto-detect the program file format.
  • If a CAQ header is detected, the program will be loaded accordingly.
    • Bad file error will result if the CAQ header is invalid.
  • If no CAQ header is found, load checks to see if the file is in TOK format.
    • A TOK file contains the binary tokenized program minus the CAQ header and trailer.
  • If neither of the above formats are detected, the file is assumed to be ASCII.
    • If the file is not in ASCII format, the results will be unpredictable.
    • The maximum length of any one line is 255 characters.
    • Any blank lines (empty or all spaces) in the file will be ignored.
    • Undefined line number error will result if a line
      • has no line number
      • has a line number less than or equal to the previous line number
      • is longer than 255 characters
  • Input past end error will result if the file is empty (a size of 0 bytes)

Examples:

LOAD "demo.baq"

Loads BASIC program file demo.baq in current directory into memory.

LOAD "/subdir/prog.baq"

Loads BASIC program file prog.baq in subdirectory subdir into memory.

LOAD "/main.baq"

Loads BASIC program file main.baq in root directory into memory.

LOAD "source.bas"

Tokenizes ASCII file source.bas in current directory into BASIC program in memory.

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FORMAT: LOAD filespec , * arrayvar

Action: Loads CAQ formatted numeric array file into BASIC array.

• filespec is a string expression containing an optional path and the full file name.
• arrayvar is the array variable name with no subscripts.
  • The array may be a numeric array.
    • The array must be explicitly declared with a DIM statement before loading into it.
    • A numeric array contains binary data with a length of 4 times the total number of elements bytes.
    • A file containing too much array data will be truncated to fit in the array.
• ?Bad file results if file is not array data in CAQ format.

Examples:

DIM A(99)
LOAD "data.arry",*A

Loads contents of array file data.arry into numeric array A().

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FORMAT: LOAD filespec , address

Action: Loads contents of binary file into memory.

• filespec is a string expression containing an optional path and the full file name.
• address is the starting location in memory that the file will be loaded to.
• Error 50, File not found results if the file does not exist. (as of v0.17f)

Example: LOAD "capture.scr",12288

Loads the file capture.scr into SCREEN RAM.

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plusBASIC Extensions

FORMAT: LOAD filespec , @page , address

Action: As above, but loads the file into paged memory.

• page is a number in the range 0 through 255 that specified the memory page to load the file into.
• address is a number in the range 0 through 16383 that specified the starting address in the page.
• The load rolls over to the next page(s) as needed.
• Error 5, Illegal quantity results if either page or address is not within it's respective range, or if the specified range is not RAM.
• Error 6, Overflow results if the file overflows the end of page 20, 21, or 63.
• Error 50, File not found results if the file does not exist. (as of v0.17f)

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FORMAT: LOAD filespec , ^ stringvar

Action: Loads text file into a string variable.

• filespec is a string expression containing an optional path and the full file name.
• stringvar is a string variable name.
• Up to the first 255 characters will be loaded into the string.

Examples:

DIM G$(2,12)
LOAD "text.arry",*G$

Loads contents of array file text.arry into string array G$().

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FORMAT: LOAD filespec , * arrayvar

Action: Loads binary string file into a string array.

• filespec is a string expression containing an optional path and the full file name.
• arrayvar is a string array variable name with no subscripts.
  • The array must be explicitly declared with a DIM statement before loading into it.
  • A file containing too much array data will be truncated to fit in the array.
  • The array will be padded with "" elements if the data does not fill the array.

Examples:

DIM G$(2,12)
LOAD "text.arry",*G$

Loads contents of array file text.arry into string array G$().

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FORMAT: LOAD filespec , * arrayvar , ASC

Action: As above but loads an ASCII text file into the array.

• The file contents are loaded into the array starting at index 1.
• Index 0 will contain the number of lines read as a decimal string.

Examples:

DIM T$(20)
LOAD "text.txt",*T$

Loads up to 20 line of ASCII file text.txt into array T$.

LOAD BITMAP

FORMAT: LOAD BITMAP filespec

Action: Loads bitmap file into Video RAM.

• Error 49, Bad file results if the file is not a valid bitmap file.
• Error 50, File not found results if the file does not exist.

See also: Bitmap Files.