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Ahoy 1986 June
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Ahoy_Magazine_86-06_1986_Double_L.d64
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phone list
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2022-10-26
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72 lines
ELECTRIC PHONE
by Captain COMAL
I'm late! I better call George. Drat!
What's his last name? Klaverston. No.
Calverson? Wait! Why bother? You have
a computer. COMAL is good at
searching for things. This program
does it all for you: creates the data
file, let's you enter names into it,
and best of all - finds a phone
number when you need it. And you
don't have to remember the persons
full name either!
The find routine is simple. It is
really done all in one line using IN
(see line 540). The nice thing is
that IN looks over the entire string
for a match! To find the name George
Galveston you could ask for George
and it would match. Or ask for Galv,
ston, or just G. They all will match.
And keeping track of your disk files
with COMAL is easy too. The STATUS
command reports on the status of the
disk drive (see line 380). We use it
to see if opening the file was OK
("00"). The first time you run the
program the data file will not be
there, and the program detects this
and starts it for you. COMAL watches
all your files for you. Whenever you
reach the end of a file it sets EOF
(for End Of File) to TRUE. By using
EOF in line 520 we make sure our
program is not upset if it can't find
the person requested.
Did you see the ZONE command in line
50? In BASIC your screen is set up
with a default zone width of 10,
which is nice, if you happen to need
that specific setting. In COMAL, you
can set the zone to be any number you
wish (0 is the default for none).
Line 50 sets the zone to 21, perfect
for use with names up to 20
characters long (which we set in line
20). Longer names then have the phone
number on the next line (since two
tabs of 21 is past the 40 character
screen line).
Finally, look at the multiple choice
system COMAL has. Lines 140 through
270 show the CASE structure. KEY$
looks at the keyboard and returns the
key you just pressed (if any). It is
the basis of our CASE. When the key
is an E (upper or lower case) the
ENTER'NAME routine is executed. When
it is F the program first asks for a
piece of information (what to look
for) and then calls the routine
FIND'NAME to do the search. If none
of the WHEN cases match, COMAL
provides us with the OTHERWISE
section. All quite readable.