Applesoft BASIC tokenized file

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File Format
Name Applesoft BASIC tokenized file
Ontology
Released 1977

Applesoft BASIC was licensed from Microsoft and originally made available to be loaded from tape or disk. Apple models starting with the Apple II+ (the first new model after the Apple II) had Applesoft BASIC in ROM instead of the older Integer BASIC. An Applesoft I language was first released in 1977, followed by Applesoft II Floating Point BASIC in 1978, which is the most-used version. The later Apple III BASIC was based on Applesoft.

Applesoft BASIC programs were stored in a tokenized format, in files which were designated in Apple DOS directories as type "A".

Similar to a number of other BASIC tokenizations (but distinct from Integer BASIC tokenization), Applesoft programs preserved ASCII characters unchanged in the 7-bit range (bytes with high bit clear) and used the "high bit set" byte values (#128-#155) to store tokens. BASIC lines were separated by the null byte (00), and started with a two-byte address of the next program line in memory, then a two-byte little-endian integer giving the line number, then the tokenized commands and literal characters of the program line.

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