QBasic Commands

PRINT

Print something out, whatever, in quotes
PRINT "Hello World!"

COLOR fore,back

Select foreground and background colors;
fore = 0-31
back = 0-7
COLOR 12,3 This sets the colors to be light red on cyan;
COLOR ,5 This sets the background to magenta, whileleaving the foreground alone;
Note that these only take effect on subsequent PRINTs;nothing is changed on the current screen.

CLS

Clear the screen to the current background color

LOCATE row,col

Move the cursor to a particular row, column
row = 1-25
col = 1-80
LOCATE 5,40 This places the cursor in row 5, column40;

CHR$(n)

Specify a character whose ASCII codeis n
PRINT CHR$(3) This will print out a heart;

*** Nifty Alternative ***

For the extended graphics set (namely characters 128-255) you can usethe following method to display the character right in your program!

1. Hold down the [Alt] key;
2. While you are holding down the [Alt]key, enter the ASCII code for the character you want from the numerickeypad on the right of the keyboard.

Hence, if you want to use the Greek letter beta (ASCII 225), you woulddo this:

Hold down [Alt]
Press [Keypad 2], [Keypad 2], [Keypad 5]
Release [Alt]

Note that this only works within DOS; it does not work in Windows.

FOR/NEXT

Carries out a task any number of times


FOR n = 1 to 15    COLOR n    PRINT "Color"; nNEXT n

This prints out the numbers 1 through 15 in their respective colors;

GOSUB/RETURN

This allows you to create re-usable subroutines, for example:


PRINT "Here is a test..."GOSUB 1000 PRINT "I'm back now."END1000 'Subroutine PRINT "Here I am in the subroutine!" RETURN