Games - Sinclair BASIC

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Sinclair BASIC (taking its name from innovator Sir Clive Sinclair) is a dialect of the BASIC programming language used in the 8-bit home computers from Sinclair Research and Timex Sinclair. The Sinclair BASIC interpreter was made by Nine Tiles Networks Ltd.

Originally developed in 1979 to fit in the 4 KB ROM of the ZX80, it was initially an incomplete implementation of the 1978 ANSI minimal BASIC standard and evolved through the 8K ROM ZX81 and TS1000 to be an almost complete version in the 16K ROM ZX Spectrum.

Original Sinclair BASIC

Reserved words

On the Spectrum there are 86 reserved words in Sinclair BASIC, denoting commands (50), functions (31), and other keywords (5):

:ABS, ACS, AND¹, ASN, AT, ATN, ATTR, BEEP, BIN, BORDER, BRIGHT, CAT², CHR$³, CIRCLE, CLEAR, CLOSE#², CLS, CODE³, CONTINUE, COPY, COS, DATA, DEF FN, DIM, DRAW, ERASE², EXP, FLASH, FN, FOR, FORMAT², GO SUB, GO TO, IF⁴, IN, INK, INKEY$³, INPUT, INT, INVERSE, LEN, LET⁵, LINE, LIST, LLIST, LN, LOAD, LPRINT, MERGE, MOVE², NEW, NEXT, NOT¹, OPEN#², OR¹, OUT, OVER, PAPER, PAUSE, PEEK, PI, PLOT, POINT, POKE, PRINT, RANDOMIZE, READ, REM, RESTORE, RETURN, RND, RUN, SAVE, SCREEN$³, SGN, SIN, SQR, STEP, STR$³, TAB, TAN, THEN ⁴, TO, USR, VAL^{3, 6}, VAL$³, VERIFY

Commands found exclusively on the ZX81 and its clones the TS1000 and TS1500 are:

:FAST, SCROLL, SLOW, UNPLOT, GOSUB, GOTO (vs the Spectrum's GO SUB, GO TO)

The Spectrum 128K models—the Spectrum 128K, Spectrum +2, +3, +2A, and +2B—introduced two commands:

:PLAY, SPECTRUM

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Sinclair BASIC ]

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