Date   : Mon, 11 Jul 2005 12:08:08 +0100
From   : jgh@... (Jonathan Graham Harston)
Subject: Re: This program will self destruct

Richard_Talbot-Watkins@... wrote:
> The question is: why does this happen?  It seems odd that
> there's a bug in the ? operator, which appears not to happen at
> all with the ! operator.
 
No, it's a bug in the programmer. You are using the ? operator
incorrectly.
 
It's like saying "why does !0=0 crash the program?!???".
 
If your program tramples all over BASIC's workspace, it get
exactly what it deserves.
 
When a procedure/function is called the address of the outside
variable is stacked, along with it's contents. For numeric values
this is only ever either five bytes for a real variable or four
bytes for anything else.
 
-- 
JGH