Date   : Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:04:21 +0000 (GMT)
From   : debounce@... (Greg Cook)
Subject: Basic6809 1.00

On Tue, 10/11/09, Rick Murray <rick@...> wrote:

> Greg Cook wrote:
> 
>  > Edgar Dijkstra
> 
> Ah... He who didn't like GOTOs.

Actually it's Edsger... my apologies. :%(

> I still fail to see why 2...12 is not sufficient to mark
> out a range 
> from 2 to 12. Using 2...less-than-13 is odd, because it
> implies that:
> ???*Save Blah 8000 8001
> is the command to save an empty file!

Nope, it implies 8000 8000.  Probably spotted it the moment you hit Send :)

Elsewhere Rick wrote:
> The most logical thing is to say if you were buying lottery
> scratchcards, and you wanted the second to fourth cards in the pile, how
> confused would the girl be if you asked for the second-to-less-
> than-fifth?

Alright, I'm converted.  'Empty subsequences' are themselves unnatural IRL,
so there is no real objection to method (c) in the paper.  Perhaps it was
just historical, or adding ones here and there couldn't be justified ROM
space, or it was a matter of elegance at the expense of intuitiveness.

> > http://homepages.tesco.net/rainstorm/
> 
> Nice site... The "False CRC-CCITT calculation in the
> Shakespeare 
> programming language" is a bit over my head (hated the
> verbosity of it 
> at school), perhaps it could lend itself to a mini Fighting
> Fantasy 
> adventure (aahhhh, remember The Citadel of Chaos?).

Thanks for noticing.  It was my first Shakespeare program so not much use
is made of its capacity for artistic expression (more negatives, redundant
terms in expressions, etc.)  I don't know of any esoteric languages in the
interactive fiction style (except those that code text adventures.)

Greg Cook
debounce@...
http://homepages.tesco.net/rainstorm/