3 ms·
It would surprise me if any interpreted basic would store keywords as strings in memory. Replacing them by single bytes is more efficient on memory and makes in
by Someone 5y ago
It would surprise me if any interpreted basic would store keywords as strings in memory. Replacing them by single bytes is more efficient on memory and makes interpreting the program simpler and faster (if you see a P, you won’t know yet whether that’s part of PRINT, PEEK, POKE, or of an assignment to P or P$). Memory and cycles where so expensive that you couldn’t afford not to make such optimizations.
The Commodore Basics certainly replaced keywords by tokens (https://www.masswerk.at/nowgobang/2020/commodore-basic-renumber https://www.masswerk.at/nowgobang/2020/commodore-basic-renum...)