Strange math syntax in old basic listing





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47

















I'm browsing through an old book "Basic Computer Simulation" from 1983. It contains a line of BASIC code that reads:





LET Z1 = M * D1 * (PQ / A) [ 3


I understand all of the code except the "[ 3" I don't ever remember that syntax in any BASIC I learned.



The book calls it a "universal subset of BASIC" and says it has been tested on a TRS-80 Model III. Similar lines of code appear in other listings in the book so I don't think it is just a typesetting error.



Another formula in a different listing is:



LET H = H1 - .5 * G * (T1 - T) [ 2


This is a formula for a falling object.










share|improve this question
























  • 9





    It's probably a typo in the book (books published in that era were often set by hand, rather than directly from actual source code). I would guess the [ is supposed to be /, but it's impossible to tell without some context.

    – Greg Hewgill
    May 27 at 23:26






  • 3





    Other possibilities might be + or - because they're both very close to the [ key on a standard keyboard. If it's for a particular machine that might raise other possibilities though, because a lot of the ones at the time had their own peculiarities of layout.

    – Matthew Barber
    May 28 at 0:28






  • 6





    You mention the TRS-80, but en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_character_set indicates that it didn't even have square bracket characters at all. Its character set had arrowheads in the place normally occupied by square brackets in ASCII.

    – Greg Hewgill
    May 28 at 2:19






  • 18





    @GregHewgill I think you're on to something. vavasour.ca/jeff/trs80.html has a document that says "note that the [ represents an up-arrow on the TRS-80." and bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dartmouth/BASIC_Oct64.pdf says the up-arrow is the exponential operator.

    – Ron Jensen
    May 28 at 2:48






  • 11





    @GregHewgill There is enough context from the second equation which is the gravity specific version of s = ut + 1/2at^2 to tell that the [ is exponentiation or ^ in most Basic's.

    – JeremyP
    May 28 at 8:41


















47

















I'm browsing through an old book "Basic Computer Simulation" from 1983. It contains a line of BASIC code that reads:





LET Z1 = M * D1 * (PQ / A) [ 3


I understand all of the code except the "[ 3" I don't ever remember that syntax in any BASIC I learned.



The book calls it a "universal subset of BASIC" and says it has been tested on a TRS-80 Model III. Similar lines of code appear in other listings in the book so I don't think it is just a typesetting error.



Another formula in a different listing is:



LET H = H1 - .5 * G * (T1 - T) [ 2


This is a formula for a falling object.










share|improve this question
























  • 9





    It's probably a typo in the book (books published in that era were often set by hand, rather than directly from actual source code). I would guess the [ is supposed to be /, but it's impossible to tell without some context.

    – Greg Hewgill
    May 27 at 23:26






  • 3





    Other possibilities might be + or - because they're both very close to the [ key on a standard keyboard. If it's for a particular machine that might raise other possibilities though, because a lot of the ones at the time had their own peculiarities of layout.

    – Matthew Barber
    May 28 at 0:28






  • 6





    You mention the TRS-80, but en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_character_set indicates that it didn't even have square bracket characters at all. Its character set had arrowheads in the place normally occupied by square brackets in ASCII.

    – Greg Hewgill
    May 28 at 2:19






  • 18





    @GregHewgill I think you're on to something. vavasour.ca/jeff/trs80.html has a document that says "note that the [ represents an up-arrow on the TRS-80." and bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dartmouth/BASIC_Oct64.pdf says the up-arrow is the exponential operator.

    – Ron Jensen
    May 28 at 2:48






  • 11





    @GregHewgill There is enough context from the second equation which is the gravity specific version of s = ut + 1/2at^2 to tell that the [ is exponentiation or ^ in most Basic's.

    – JeremyP
    May 28 at 8:41














47












47








47


5






I'm browsing through an old book "Basic Computer Simulation" from 1983. It contains a line of BASIC code that reads:





LET Z1 = M * D1 * (PQ / A) [ 3


I understand all of the code except the "[ 3" I don't ever remember that syntax in any BASIC I learned.



The book calls it a "universal subset of BASIC" and says it has been tested on a TRS-80 Model III. Similar lines of code appear in other listings in the book so I don't think it is just a typesetting error.



Another formula in a different listing is:



LET H = H1 - .5 * G * (T1 - T) [ 2


This is a formula for a falling object.










share|improve this question
















I'm browsing through an old book "Basic Computer Simulation" from 1983. It contains a line of BASIC code that reads:





LET Z1 = M * D1 * (PQ / A) [ 3


I understand all of the code except the "[ 3" I don't ever remember that syntax in any BASIC I learned.



The book calls it a "universal subset of BASIC" and says it has been tested on a TRS-80 Model III. Similar lines of code appear in other listings in the book so I don't think it is just a typesetting error.



Another formula in a different listing is:



LET H = H1 - .5 * G * (T1 - T) [ 2


This is a formula for a falling object.







basic






share|improve this question















share|improve this question













share|improve this question




share|improve this question



share|improve this question








edited May 28 at 4:33







Ron Jensen

















asked May 27 at 23:19









Ron JensenRon Jensen

3383 silver badges7 bronze badges




3383 silver badges7 bronze badges











  • 9





    It's probably a typo in the book (books published in that era were often set by hand, rather than directly from actual source code). I would guess the [ is supposed to be /, but it's impossible to tell without some context.

    – Greg Hewgill
    May 27 at 23:26






  • 3





    Other possibilities might be + or - because they're both very close to the [ key on a standard keyboard. If it's for a particular machine that might raise other possibilities though, because a lot of the ones at the time had their own peculiarities of layout.

    – Matthew Barber
    May 28 at 0:28






  • 6





    You mention the TRS-80, but en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_character_set indicates that it didn't even have square bracket characters at all. Its character set had arrowheads in the place normally occupied by square brackets in ASCII.

    – Greg Hewgill
    May 28 at 2:19






  • 18





    @GregHewgill I think you're on to something. vavasour.ca/jeff/trs80.html has a document that says "note that the [ represents an up-arrow on the TRS-80." and bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dartmouth/BASIC_Oct64.pdf says the up-arrow is the exponential operator.

    – Ron Jensen
    May 28 at 2:48






  • 11





    @GregHewgill There is enough context from the second equation which is the gravity specific version of s = ut + 1/2at^2 to tell that the [ is exponentiation or ^ in most Basic's.

    – JeremyP
    May 28 at 8:41














  • 9





    It's probably a typo in the book (books published in that era were often set by hand, rather than directly from actual source code). I would guess the [ is supposed to be /, but it's impossible to tell without some context.

    – Greg Hewgill
    May 27 at 23:26






  • 3





    Other possibilities might be + or - because they're both very close to the [ key on a standard keyboard. If it's for a particular machine that might raise other possibilities though, because a lot of the ones at the time had their own peculiarities of layout.

    – Matthew Barber
    May 28 at 0:28






  • 6





    You mention the TRS-80, but en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_character_set indicates that it didn't even have square bracket characters at all. Its character set had arrowheads in the place normally occupied by square brackets in ASCII.

    – Greg Hewgill
    May 28 at 2:19






  • 18





    @GregHewgill I think you're on to something. vavasour.ca/jeff/trs80.html has a document that says "note that the [ represents an up-arrow on the TRS-80." and bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dartmouth/BASIC_Oct64.pdf says the up-arrow is the exponential operator.

    – Ron Jensen
    May 28 at 2:48






  • 11





    @GregHewgill There is enough context from the second equation which is the gravity specific version of s = ut + 1/2at^2 to tell that the [ is exponentiation or ^ in most Basic's.

    – JeremyP
    May 28 at 8:41








9




9





It's probably a typo in the book (books published in that era were often set by hand, rather than directly from actual source code). I would guess the [ is supposed to be /, but it's impossible to tell without some context.

– Greg Hewgill
May 27 at 23:26





It's probably a typo in the book (books published in that era were often set by hand, rather than directly from actual source code). I would guess the [ is supposed to be /, but it's impossible to tell without some context.

– Greg Hewgill
May 27 at 23:26




3




3





Other possibilities might be + or - because they're both very close to the [ key on a standard keyboard. If it's for a particular machine that might raise other possibilities though, because a lot of the ones at the time had their own peculiarities of layout.

– Matthew Barber
May 28 at 0:28





Other possibilities might be + or - because they're both very close to the [ key on a standard keyboard. If it's for a particular machine that might raise other possibilities though, because a lot of the ones at the time had their own peculiarities of layout.

– Matthew Barber
May 28 at 0:28




6




6





You mention the TRS-80, but en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_character_set indicates that it didn't even have square bracket characters at all. Its character set had arrowheads in the place normally occupied by square brackets in ASCII.

– Greg Hewgill
May 28 at 2:19





You mention the TRS-80, but en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_character_set indicates that it didn't even have square bracket characters at all. Its character set had arrowheads in the place normally occupied by square brackets in ASCII.

– Greg Hewgill
May 28 at 2:19




18




18





@GregHewgill I think you're on to something. vavasour.ca/jeff/trs80.html has a document that says "note that the [ represents an up-arrow on the TRS-80." and bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dartmouth/BASIC_Oct64.pdf says the up-arrow is the exponential operator.

– Ron Jensen
May 28 at 2:48





@GregHewgill I think you're on to something. vavasour.ca/jeff/trs80.html has a document that says "note that the [ represents an up-arrow on the TRS-80." and bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dartmouth/BASIC_Oct64.pdf says the up-arrow is the exponential operator.

– Ron Jensen
May 28 at 2:48




11




11





@GregHewgill There is enough context from the second equation which is the gravity specific version of s = ut + 1/2at^2 to tell that the [ is exponentiation or ^ in most Basic's.

– JeremyP
May 28 at 8:41





@GregHewgill There is enough context from the second equation which is the gravity specific version of s = ut + 1/2at^2 to tell that the [ is exponentiation or ^ in most Basic's.

– JeremyP
May 28 at 8:41










3 Answers
3






active

oldest

votes


















58


















Your mention of TRS-80 provides a clue. In the TRS-80 character set, the space normally occupied by the ASCII [ character is instead a (up arrow) character. Old versions of BASIC (such as this one from 1964) use the up arrow character to indicate exponentiation, probably because at that time the ^ character was not even in the ASCII standard. (There is another question on this site Why do we use caret (^) as the symbol for ctrl/control? which addresses the evolution of ^.)



Your second example LET H = H1 - .5 * G * (T1 - T) [ 2 provides another clue, as it is a formula for position of a falling object, which has a square in the time term.



So, in this book, the [ character represents the up arrow character because [ in ASCII occupies character number 91, the same as in the TRS-80 character set. (Note that this differs from the original 1963 ASCII, where was character number 94.)



When the book was typeset, there may have been a character set conversion problem where this discrepancy was not noticed, or for some reason the publisher simply could not print the character.






share|improve this answer
























  • 5





    Pedantic note: by the time the TRS-80 came along, the ASCII standard was well and truly standardised, and the ^ was there. Computer manufacturers had a tendency to call their character set ASCII though, even if it wasn't.

    – Mr Lister
    May 29 at 6:23











  • Wow. I coded on that platform and didn't realize that ^ was exponent.

    – Joshua
    May 29 at 20:35






  • 1





    Note that codepoints 91 and 94 are both in ranges reserved for national variants in ISO 646; they happen to be [ and ^ in US-ASCII, but not in all kinds of ASCII.

    – Toby Speight
    May 30 at 20:30






  • 1





    @TobySpeight There's a non-US American Standard Code for Information Interchange?

    – Curt J. Sampson
    May 31 at 3:45













  • @Curt, yep - in fact several. It does sound odd (even if you interpreted "American" more widely than "USA", which would be mistaken here). ASCII was invented and named in the US; possibly some of the national variants were too, and ISO adopted it as an international standard. It's a very large topic for a comment; I suggest you ask a question if you want more (and more informed) history on this!

    – Toby Speight
    May 31 at 7:22



















36


















In old computer books of cheaper sort, (Paperback or pocket books) it was quite common that they couldn't type set all special characters directly. Either they did as in this case, changed the character for something the computer in question didn't use, but the type setter could handle. In this case this is normally mentioned in the foreword of the book. Otherwise you had someone add the character manually to the text. I've seen both versions, even in official manuals...



In this case the [ was a substitute for arrow up, or "to the power of". This is clear from the second example in the question.






share|improve this answer
























  • 4





    The first version of the ASCII standard (in 1963) had up-arrow and left-arrow characters. Later these were changed to caret (^) and underscore (_) respectively. If you see an old listing with up-arrows, substitute carets when using more modern systems.

    – Ken Gober
    May 28 at 13:26



















24


















It is the exponentiation operator.



Why is that?



On a TRS-80 Model III the line of BASIC entered would literally be:



LET Z1 = M * D1 * (PQ / A) [ 3


To get the [ character you would press the up arrow key.



You would press the same up arrow key on its predecessor, the TRS-80 Model I. However, it would display as:



LET Z1 = M * D1 * (PQ / A) ↑ 3


This is because the Model I's character set had a few differences from ASCII. Where ASCII has the [ ] ^ characters the Model I has ↑ ↓ ← →.



You might wonder why the Model III didn't use ^ for exponentiation. The main reason is that it would prevent compatibility with the Model I which was a big feature of the Model III (even though there were some incompatibilities). I suppose it is possible that the Model III could have accepted both [ and ^ for exponentiation but then those Model III BASIC programs wouldn't be backwards compatible with the Model I.



I also speculate that Tandy would not have been comfortable making the change to the BASIC ROM themselves and would not have been interested in paying Microsoft to do it.






share|improve this answer






















  • 1





    Interesting note on the difference between the Model I and Model III.

    – Greg Hewgill
    May 28 at 18:59













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3 Answers
3






active

oldest

votes








3 Answers
3






active

oldest

votes









active

oldest

votes






active

oldest

votes









58


















Your mention of TRS-80 provides a clue. In the TRS-80 character set, the space normally occupied by the ASCII [ character is instead a (up arrow) character. Old versions of BASIC (such as this one from 1964) use the up arrow character to indicate exponentiation, probably because at that time the ^ character was not even in the ASCII standard. (There is another question on this site Why do we use caret (^) as the symbol for ctrl/control? which addresses the evolution of ^.)



Your second example LET H = H1 - .5 * G * (T1 - T) [ 2 provides another clue, as it is a formula for position of a falling object, which has a square in the time term.



So, in this book, the [ character represents the up arrow character because [ in ASCII occupies character number 91, the same as in the TRS-80 character set. (Note that this differs from the original 1963 ASCII, where was character number 94.)



When the book was typeset, there may have been a character set conversion problem where this discrepancy was not noticed, or for some reason the publisher simply could not print the character.






share|improve this answer
























  • 5





    Pedantic note: by the time the TRS-80 came along, the ASCII standard was well and truly standardised, and the ^ was there. Computer manufacturers had a tendency to call their character set ASCII though, even if it wasn't.

    – Mr Lister
    May 29 at 6:23











  • Wow. I coded on that platform and didn't realize that ^ was exponent.

    – Joshua
    May 29 at 20:35






  • 1





    Note that codepoints 91 and 94 are both in ranges reserved for national variants in ISO 646; they happen to be [ and ^ in US-ASCII, but not in all kinds of ASCII.

    – Toby Speight
    May 30 at 20:30






  • 1





    @TobySpeight There's a non-US American Standard Code for Information Interchange?

    – Curt J. Sampson
    May 31 at 3:45













  • @Curt, yep - in fact several. It does sound odd (even if you interpreted "American" more widely than "USA", which would be mistaken here). ASCII was invented and named in the US; possibly some of the national variants were too, and ISO adopted it as an international standard. It's a very large topic for a comment; I suggest you ask a question if you want more (and more informed) history on this!

    – Toby Speight
    May 31 at 7:22
















58


















Your mention of TRS-80 provides a clue. In the TRS-80 character set, the space normally occupied by the ASCII [ character is instead a (up arrow) character. Old versions of BASIC (such as this one from 1964) use the up arrow character to indicate exponentiation, probably because at that time the ^ character was not even in the ASCII standard. (There is another question on this site Why do we use caret (^) as the symbol for ctrl/control? which addresses the evolution of ^.)



Your second example LET H = H1 - .5 * G * (T1 - T) [ 2 provides another clue, as it is a formula for position of a falling object, which has a square in the time term.



So, in this book, the [ character represents the up arrow character because [ in ASCII occupies character number 91, the same as in the TRS-80 character set. (Note that this differs from the original 1963 ASCII, where was character number 94.)



When the book was typeset, there may have been a character set conversion problem where this discrepancy was not noticed, or for some reason the publisher simply could not print the character.






share|improve this answer
























  • 5





    Pedantic note: by the time the TRS-80 came along, the ASCII standard was well and truly standardised, and the ^ was there. Computer manufacturers had a tendency to call their character set ASCII though, even if it wasn't.

    – Mr Lister
    May 29 at 6:23











  • Wow. I coded on that platform and didn't realize that ^ was exponent.

    – Joshua
    May 29 at 20:35






  • 1





    Note that codepoints 91 and 94 are both in ranges reserved for national variants in ISO 646; they happen to be [ and ^ in US-ASCII, but not in all kinds of ASCII.

    – Toby Speight
    May 30 at 20:30






  • 1





    @TobySpeight There's a non-US American Standard Code for Information Interchange?

    – Curt J. Sampson
    May 31 at 3:45













  • @Curt, yep - in fact several. It does sound odd (even if you interpreted "American" more widely than "USA", which would be mistaken here). ASCII was invented and named in the US; possibly some of the national variants were too, and ISO adopted it as an international standard. It's a very large topic for a comment; I suggest you ask a question if you want more (and more informed) history on this!

    – Toby Speight
    May 31 at 7:22














58














58










58









Your mention of TRS-80 provides a clue. In the TRS-80 character set, the space normally occupied by the ASCII [ character is instead a (up arrow) character. Old versions of BASIC (such as this one from 1964) use the up arrow character to indicate exponentiation, probably because at that time the ^ character was not even in the ASCII standard. (There is another question on this site Why do we use caret (^) as the symbol for ctrl/control? which addresses the evolution of ^.)



Your second example LET H = H1 - .5 * G * (T1 - T) [ 2 provides another clue, as it is a formula for position of a falling object, which has a square in the time term.



So, in this book, the [ character represents the up arrow character because [ in ASCII occupies character number 91, the same as in the TRS-80 character set. (Note that this differs from the original 1963 ASCII, where was character number 94.)



When the book was typeset, there may have been a character set conversion problem where this discrepancy was not noticed, or for some reason the publisher simply could not print the character.






share|improve this answer
















Your mention of TRS-80 provides a clue. In the TRS-80 character set, the space normally occupied by the ASCII [ character is instead a (up arrow) character. Old versions of BASIC (such as this one from 1964) use the up arrow character to indicate exponentiation, probably because at that time the ^ character was not even in the ASCII standard. (There is another question on this site Why do we use caret (^) as the symbol for ctrl/control? which addresses the evolution of ^.)



Your second example LET H = H1 - .5 * G * (T1 - T) [ 2 provides another clue, as it is a formula for position of a falling object, which has a square in the time term.



So, in this book, the [ character represents the up arrow character because [ in ASCII occupies character number 91, the same as in the TRS-80 character set. (Note that this differs from the original 1963 ASCII, where was character number 94.)



When the book was typeset, there may have been a character set conversion problem where this discrepancy was not noticed, or for some reason the publisher simply could not print the character.







share|improve this answer















share|improve this answer




share|improve this answer



share|improve this answer








edited May 30 at 20:44









Toby Speight

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6455 silver badges16 bronze badges










answered May 28 at 18:21









Greg HewgillGreg Hewgill

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  • 5





    Pedantic note: by the time the TRS-80 came along, the ASCII standard was well and truly standardised, and the ^ was there. Computer manufacturers had a tendency to call their character set ASCII though, even if it wasn't.

    – Mr Lister
    May 29 at 6:23











  • Wow. I coded on that platform and didn't realize that ^ was exponent.

    – Joshua
    May 29 at 20:35






  • 1





    Note that codepoints 91 and 94 are both in ranges reserved for national variants in ISO 646; they happen to be [ and ^ in US-ASCII, but not in all kinds of ASCII.

    – Toby Speight
    May 30 at 20:30






  • 1





    @TobySpeight There's a non-US American Standard Code for Information Interchange?

    – Curt J. Sampson
    May 31 at 3:45













  • @Curt, yep - in fact several. It does sound odd (even if you interpreted "American" more widely than "USA", which would be mistaken here). ASCII was invented and named in the US; possibly some of the national variants were too, and ISO adopted it as an international standard. It's a very large topic for a comment; I suggest you ask a question if you want more (and more informed) history on this!

    – Toby Speight
    May 31 at 7:22














  • 5





    Pedantic note: by the time the TRS-80 came along, the ASCII standard was well and truly standardised, and the ^ was there. Computer manufacturers had a tendency to call their character set ASCII though, even if it wasn't.

    – Mr Lister
    May 29 at 6:23











  • Wow. I coded on that platform and didn't realize that ^ was exponent.

    – Joshua
    May 29 at 20:35






  • 1





    Note that codepoints 91 and 94 are both in ranges reserved for national variants in ISO 646; they happen to be [ and ^ in US-ASCII, but not in all kinds of ASCII.

    – Toby Speight
    May 30 at 20:30






  • 1





    @TobySpeight There's a non-US American Standard Code for Information Interchange?

    – Curt J. Sampson
    May 31 at 3:45













  • @Curt, yep - in fact several. It does sound odd (even if you interpreted "American" more widely than "USA", which would be mistaken here). ASCII was invented and named in the US; possibly some of the national variants were too, and ISO adopted it as an international standard. It's a very large topic for a comment; I suggest you ask a question if you want more (and more informed) history on this!

    – Toby Speight
    May 31 at 7:22








5




5





Pedantic note: by the time the TRS-80 came along, the ASCII standard was well and truly standardised, and the ^ was there. Computer manufacturers had a tendency to call their character set ASCII though, even if it wasn't.

– Mr Lister
May 29 at 6:23





Pedantic note: by the time the TRS-80 came along, the ASCII standard was well and truly standardised, and the ^ was there. Computer manufacturers had a tendency to call their character set ASCII though, even if it wasn't.

– Mr Lister
May 29 at 6:23













Wow. I coded on that platform and didn't realize that ^ was exponent.

– Joshua
May 29 at 20:35





Wow. I coded on that platform and didn't realize that ^ was exponent.

– Joshua
May 29 at 20:35




1




1





Note that codepoints 91 and 94 are both in ranges reserved for national variants in ISO 646; they happen to be [ and ^ in US-ASCII, but not in all kinds of ASCII.

– Toby Speight
May 30 at 20:30





Note that codepoints 91 and 94 are both in ranges reserved for national variants in ISO 646; they happen to be [ and ^ in US-ASCII, but not in all kinds of ASCII.

– Toby Speight
May 30 at 20:30




1




1





@TobySpeight There's a non-US American Standard Code for Information Interchange?

– Curt J. Sampson
May 31 at 3:45







@TobySpeight There's a non-US American Standard Code for Information Interchange?

– Curt J. Sampson
May 31 at 3:45















@Curt, yep - in fact several. It does sound odd (even if you interpreted "American" more widely than "USA", which would be mistaken here). ASCII was invented and named in the US; possibly some of the national variants were too, and ISO adopted it as an international standard. It's a very large topic for a comment; I suggest you ask a question if you want more (and more informed) history on this!

– Toby Speight
May 31 at 7:22





@Curt, yep - in fact several. It does sound odd (even if you interpreted "American" more widely than "USA", which would be mistaken here). ASCII was invented and named in the US; possibly some of the national variants were too, and ISO adopted it as an international standard. It's a very large topic for a comment; I suggest you ask a question if you want more (and more informed) history on this!

– Toby Speight
May 31 at 7:22













36


















In old computer books of cheaper sort, (Paperback or pocket books) it was quite common that they couldn't type set all special characters directly. Either they did as in this case, changed the character for something the computer in question didn't use, but the type setter could handle. In this case this is normally mentioned in the foreword of the book. Otherwise you had someone add the character manually to the text. I've seen both versions, even in official manuals...



In this case the [ was a substitute for arrow up, or "to the power of". This is clear from the second example in the question.






share|improve this answer
























  • 4





    The first version of the ASCII standard (in 1963) had up-arrow and left-arrow characters. Later these were changed to caret (^) and underscore (_) respectively. If you see an old listing with up-arrows, substitute carets when using more modern systems.

    – Ken Gober
    May 28 at 13:26
















36


















In old computer books of cheaper sort, (Paperback or pocket books) it was quite common that they couldn't type set all special characters directly. Either they did as in this case, changed the character for something the computer in question didn't use, but the type setter could handle. In this case this is normally mentioned in the foreword of the book. Otherwise you had someone add the character manually to the text. I've seen both versions, even in official manuals...



In this case the [ was a substitute for arrow up, or "to the power of". This is clear from the second example in the question.






share|improve this answer
























  • 4





    The first version of the ASCII standard (in 1963) had up-arrow and left-arrow characters. Later these were changed to caret (^) and underscore (_) respectively. If you see an old listing with up-arrows, substitute carets when using more modern systems.

    – Ken Gober
    May 28 at 13:26














36














36










36









In old computer books of cheaper sort, (Paperback or pocket books) it was quite common that they couldn't type set all special characters directly. Either they did as in this case, changed the character for something the computer in question didn't use, but the type setter could handle. In this case this is normally mentioned in the foreword of the book. Otherwise you had someone add the character manually to the text. I've seen both versions, even in official manuals...



In this case the [ was a substitute for arrow up, or "to the power of". This is clear from the second example in the question.






share|improve this answer
















In old computer books of cheaper sort, (Paperback or pocket books) it was quite common that they couldn't type set all special characters directly. Either they did as in this case, changed the character for something the computer in question didn't use, but the type setter could handle. In this case this is normally mentioned in the foreword of the book. Otherwise you had someone add the character manually to the text. I've seen both versions, even in official manuals...



In this case the [ was a substitute for arrow up, or "to the power of". This is clear from the second example in the question.







share|improve this answer















share|improve this answer




share|improve this answer



share|improve this answer








edited May 28 at 5:13









Wilson

14.8k7 gold badges68 silver badges161 bronze badges




14.8k7 gold badges68 silver badges161 bronze badges










answered May 28 at 4:56









UncleBodUncleBod

1,0032 gold badges3 silver badges16 bronze badges




1,0032 gold badges3 silver badges16 bronze badges











  • 4





    The first version of the ASCII standard (in 1963) had up-arrow and left-arrow characters. Later these were changed to caret (^) and underscore (_) respectively. If you see an old listing with up-arrows, substitute carets when using more modern systems.

    – Ken Gober
    May 28 at 13:26














  • 4





    The first version of the ASCII standard (in 1963) had up-arrow and left-arrow characters. Later these were changed to caret (^) and underscore (_) respectively. If you see an old listing with up-arrows, substitute carets when using more modern systems.

    – Ken Gober
    May 28 at 13:26








4




4





The first version of the ASCII standard (in 1963) had up-arrow and left-arrow characters. Later these were changed to caret (^) and underscore (_) respectively. If you see an old listing with up-arrows, substitute carets when using more modern systems.

– Ken Gober
May 28 at 13:26





The first version of the ASCII standard (in 1963) had up-arrow and left-arrow characters. Later these were changed to caret (^) and underscore (_) respectively. If you see an old listing with up-arrows, substitute carets when using more modern systems.

– Ken Gober
May 28 at 13:26











24


















It is the exponentiation operator.



Why is that?



On a TRS-80 Model III the line of BASIC entered would literally be:



LET Z1 = M * D1 * (PQ / A) [ 3


To get the [ character you would press the up arrow key.



You would press the same up arrow key on its predecessor, the TRS-80 Model I. However, it would display as:



LET Z1 = M * D1 * (PQ / A) ↑ 3


This is because the Model I's character set had a few differences from ASCII. Where ASCII has the [ ] ^ characters the Model I has ↑ ↓ ← →.



You might wonder why the Model III didn't use ^ for exponentiation. The main reason is that it would prevent compatibility with the Model I which was a big feature of the Model III (even though there were some incompatibilities). I suppose it is possible that the Model III could have accepted both [ and ^ for exponentiation but then those Model III BASIC programs wouldn't be backwards compatible with the Model I.



I also speculate that Tandy would not have been comfortable making the change to the BASIC ROM themselves and would not have been interested in paying Microsoft to do it.






share|improve this answer






















  • 1





    Interesting note on the difference between the Model I and Model III.

    – Greg Hewgill
    May 28 at 18:59
















24


















It is the exponentiation operator.



Why is that?



On a TRS-80 Model III the line of BASIC entered would literally be:



LET Z1 = M * D1 * (PQ / A) [ 3


To get the [ character you would press the up arrow key.



You would press the same up arrow key on its predecessor, the TRS-80 Model I. However, it would display as:



LET Z1 = M * D1 * (PQ / A) ↑ 3


This is because the Model I's character set had a few differences from ASCII. Where ASCII has the [ ] ^ characters the Model I has ↑ ↓ ← →.



You might wonder why the Model III didn't use ^ for exponentiation. The main reason is that it would prevent compatibility with the Model I which was a big feature of the Model III (even though there were some incompatibilities). I suppose it is possible that the Model III could have accepted both [ and ^ for exponentiation but then those Model III BASIC programs wouldn't be backwards compatible with the Model I.



I also speculate that Tandy would not have been comfortable making the change to the BASIC ROM themselves and would not have been interested in paying Microsoft to do it.






share|improve this answer






















  • 1





    Interesting note on the difference between the Model I and Model III.

    – Greg Hewgill
    May 28 at 18:59














24














24










24









It is the exponentiation operator.



Why is that?



On a TRS-80 Model III the line of BASIC entered would literally be:



LET Z1 = M * D1 * (PQ / A) [ 3


To get the [ character you would press the up arrow key.



You would press the same up arrow key on its predecessor, the TRS-80 Model I. However, it would display as:



LET Z1 = M * D1 * (PQ / A) ↑ 3


This is because the Model I's character set had a few differences from ASCII. Where ASCII has the [ ] ^ characters the Model I has ↑ ↓ ← →.



You might wonder why the Model III didn't use ^ for exponentiation. The main reason is that it would prevent compatibility with the Model I which was a big feature of the Model III (even though there were some incompatibilities). I suppose it is possible that the Model III could have accepted both [ and ^ for exponentiation but then those Model III BASIC programs wouldn't be backwards compatible with the Model I.



I also speculate that Tandy would not have been comfortable making the change to the BASIC ROM themselves and would not have been interested in paying Microsoft to do it.






share|improve this answer














It is the exponentiation operator.



Why is that?



On a TRS-80 Model III the line of BASIC entered would literally be:



LET Z1 = M * D1 * (PQ / A) [ 3


To get the [ character you would press the up arrow key.



You would press the same up arrow key on its predecessor, the TRS-80 Model I. However, it would display as:



LET Z1 = M * D1 * (PQ / A) ↑ 3


This is because the Model I's character set had a few differences from ASCII. Where ASCII has the [ ] ^ characters the Model I has ↑ ↓ ← →.



You might wonder why the Model III didn't use ^ for exponentiation. The main reason is that it would prevent compatibility with the Model I which was a big feature of the Model III (even though there were some incompatibilities). I suppose it is possible that the Model III could have accepted both [ and ^ for exponentiation but then those Model III BASIC programs wouldn't be backwards compatible with the Model I.



I also speculate that Tandy would not have been comfortable making the change to the BASIC ROM themselves and would not have been interested in paying Microsoft to do it.







share|improve this answer













share|improve this answer




share|improve this answer



share|improve this answer










answered May 28 at 18:55









George PhillipsGeorge Phillips

4,57019 silver badges24 bronze badges




4,57019 silver badges24 bronze badges











  • 1





    Interesting note on the difference between the Model I and Model III.

    – Greg Hewgill
    May 28 at 18:59














  • 1





    Interesting note on the difference between the Model I and Model III.

    – Greg Hewgill
    May 28 at 18:59








1




1





Interesting note on the difference between the Model I and Model III.

– Greg Hewgill
May 28 at 18:59





Interesting note on the difference between the Model I and Model III.

– Greg Hewgill
May 28 at 18:59



















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