Re: Learning to program with TI-86... need help!


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Re: Learning to program with TI-86... need help!



buzzsaw@tamu.edu writes:

> Hey... I'm trying to learn some of the fundamentals of BASIC with the
> 86.  I was looking at some tutorials on some guys web page, and I
> can't figure out what he meant by "the mini "L" under the LIST menu".
>
> Can anyone possibly describe to me a little better what this symbol
> is?  I went to the LIST menu and I have no idea what he meant.  Sorry,
> I'm just a newbie, I know, but hey, you gotta learn somehow, right?
> Thanks in advance for any help...
>
> Buzzsaw

Seems to be some confusion between calculator models here! On the TI-83
names of lists are (usually) required to be prefixed with a special character
(a tiny L) to distinguish them from the names of regular numeric variables.
Thus you can have both A and LA as names of variables (where that is
not a capital L but a tiny one, as described). The user is limited to
27 single-letter names for numeric (scalar) variables, but list names
preceded with the special L character can be several characters long,
so that you could have both  LX1 and LX2 for example. As a convenience
to the user in entering names of lists, the special L character is built
in as one of the choices on the LIST menu.

On the TI-86, of course, names of _any_ variables are allowed to be more
than one character in length, and no special type-symbol prefixing any
name is required. The variable x could refer to a scalar or to a list
(though it's probably good practice to _choose_ easily recognizable names
for lists -- one of the fine points of programming style). Actually,
names in the TI-86 environment are case-sensitive, so that the variable
X could be used for a different purpose. Good programming practice, again,
would suggest not mixing together use of x and X, though.

Anyway, hope this clears things up.

RWW Taylor
National Technical Institute for the Deaf
Rochester Institute of Technology
Rochester NY 14623

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