Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 (Tek) 9/26/83; site teklabs.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!floyd!harpo!seismo!hao!hplabs!tektronix!tekchips!teklabs!carlc From: carlc@teklabs.UUCP (Carl Clawson ) Newsgroups: net.micro.hp Subject: Graphics bug in series 200 Basic Message-ID: <2781@teklabs.UUCP> Date: Tue, 27-Mar-84 18:46:03 EST Article-I.D.: teklabs.2781 Posted: Tue Mar 27 18:46:03 1984 Date-Received: Fri, 30-Mar-84 02:28:35 EST Organization: Tektronix, Beaverton OR Lines: 39 Okay, okay! Please excuse the flame. I have since discovered the proper place for such. And I WAS a bit too hard on HP Basic. It is a reasonably powerful language, but with that power comes a level of debugging difficulty that far exceeds that of generic Basic. And, let's face it, software is easy to hate; documentation even more so. Now how about some positive information content? The noxious bug in BASIC 2.0 which triggered my splenetic venting is as follows. (Not to imply we haven't had other problems...) The program 10 OPTION BASE 1 20 GINIT 30 GRAPHICS ON 40 GCLEAR 50 MOVE 65,50 60 RPLOT 50,50,-1 70 END works fine and draws a nice line on our CRT. Now we merely insert the line 31 DIM X(100),Y(100),Z(100) (which would not appear to be related to anything else in this program); no line gets drawn and we get the message: "ERROR 16 IN 60 Improper dimensions" It seems simple, but this is a distilled version of a glitch that ate up more programmer's time than I care to remember. Now, for fun, just change line 31 so the array names are "A,B,C" rather than "X,Y,Z" and it works! It would appear that the names "X,Y,Z" are somehow sacred to the graphics package. I can't believe this was intended and I certainly haven't seen it mentioned in the manuals. Has anyone else seen this or similar stuff?