Atom BASIC

Strings

Atom BASIC added string support but did not support string variables nor did it have the concept of a string as an atomic type. Instead, the vector system was used to manipulate string data in memory, as ASCII values. To aid this usage, the $ operator converted in-memory values to their ASCII values. This operator continued reading data from memory until it encountered a return, and when writing data to memory, always added a return at the end. So while PRINT ?A would print the single value of the byte at A's location in memory as a number, PRINT $A would read the values starting at that location and print it as a string. For instance: