Atari BASIC Prints "Tab" Characters to Text File

[chessplayerjames]

Good evening all,

 

(Background Information)

Spoiler

Last semester in college, we had to design a compiler.  I decided I'd try my luck (and rack my brain) to create a similar compiler...for the Atari 800XL.  I am using the Altirra emulator.

 

I am creating a program in BASIC, and sometimes when I write text files to disk, I get a weird "tab" character, comprising of several spaces at the beginning of each line.  As evidence of so many spaces, the file size is considerably greater than it should be (is several bytes bigger for each line, and in one file that had hundreds of lines, the file-size was almost five times bigger).

EDIT: There are exactly ten spaces at the beginning of each line.

 

My code looks something like this:

 

I have made other BASIC programs that do not do these weird tab characters.  Example:

This has no "tabs" or spaces at the beginning of each line (like the first photo shows).

 

What am I doing wrong here?

 

Any and all help will be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks,

James

Edited June 19, 2020 by chessplayerjames
Specifying where tab character is/number of spaces on each line

[+Stephen]

First thing I would check, is the value of the 2 variables STARTSTATE and NUMSTATES.  ASCII value for TAB is decimal 09. 

 

May I ask - what are those 2 values, and why are they being printed before the string contained in INPUTS$?

[chessplayerjames]

12 minutes ago, Stephen said:

First thing I would check, is the value of the 2 variables STARTSTATE and NUMSTATES.  ASCII value for TAB is decimal 09. 

 

May I ask - what are those 2 values, and why are they being printed before the string contained in INPUTS$?

STARTSTATE and NUMSTATES are 0 and 126 respectively (that is the number they should be giving, and they are "correctly" printed to the text file, except for the extra spaces).  STARTSTATE represents the entry point of the automaton, and NUMSTATES is the number of states in the automaton.  INPUTS$ is the list of characters that the automaton accepts.  Although the order could be changed (I tried it just in case and got the same result of the spaces), it doesn't (in my theory) affect the outcome.

 

EDIT: To be specific, there are ten spaces at the start of each line.

Edited June 19, 2020 by chessplayerjames
Specifying how many spaces

[vitoco]

It is because you are printing with a comma between the #1 and the variable name. You must use a semicolon:

 

600 PRINT #1;STARTSTATE

 

[chessplayerjames]

5 minutes ago, vitoco said:

It is because you are printing with a comma between the #1 and the variable name. You must use a semicolon:

 

600 PRINT #1;STARTSTATE

 

This solution worked perfectly.  I officially feel stupid now.  Thank you very much.  Should I assume that I need to use semicolon in inputs as well?

[Rybags]

For INPUT it doesn't matter in stock Atari Basic - the statement doesn't allow prompts like most others so comma or semicolon for IOCB based input is the same probably for consistency.

[dmsc]

Hi!

Quote

Good evening all,

 

I am creating a program in BASIC, and sometimes when I write text files to disk, I get a weird "tab" character, comprising of several spaces at the beginning of each line.  As evidence of so many spaces, the file size is considerably greater than it should be (is several bytes bigger for each line, and in one file that had hundreds of lines, the file-size was almost five times bigger).

 

EDIT: There are exactly ten spaces at the beginning of each line.

 

My code looks something like this:

You are using a ",", this is the "TAB" you are seeing.

 

Correct syntax is:

? #1;"My Text"

 

Have Fun!

 

Edit: Sorry, did not see that this was already answered! I'm late reading the forum 😛 

Edited June 20, 2020 by dmsc