Remarks: One-Liners

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One-liners such as 10Print are curt, minimal BASIC programs written to illustrate, imitate, or express an idea. Due to their brevity, they must often exploit resources which exist in the underlying platform. For example, 10Print relies on the PETSCI graphics system contained within the ROMs of the corresponding Computers. The one-liner itself contains no data pertaining to the curvature or pixels comprising the / and \ images.

Block graphics sets - including those non-typographic / and \ symbols used in 10Print - have collectively produced a vocabulary of emoticons, stick-figures, balance sheets, windows,

Commodore 64 users have experienced so many different system crashes that they can be aesthetically categorized. For example, the following one-liner pr

  • Snowcrash - do not use on real Commodore 64

10 poke 53248+24,timeand255: goto 10


Also, this one-liner imitates a particular set of crashes, those involving complex writes to the video hardware, which took place often.

  • Crashes I Have Known and Loved.

10 poke 53248+17,(time/10)and255: goto 10


Some one-liners take advantage of symbols to present a part of a story.

  • Icicle Storm

10 poke 1024+rnd(0)*1000,78: goto 10

These one-liners make good use of the print and poke commands. We know that PRINT was inherited from the earliest Dartmouth BASIC implementation. Did Bill Gates invent the POKE command?


Others depend upon non-standard, yet still legal behavior. In the following example, the video chip inside the Commodore 64 is modulated as fast as BASIC can go - which for this short loop is rather fast.

  • Windy Day in Chicago

10 poke 53248+22,(time/10)and255: goto 10


  • Random SID Tones

10 poke 54272 + rnd(1)*25,rnd(1)*256:goto 10

  • Alphabet on screen

10 poke 1024 + rnd(1)*1000,64+rnd(1)*26: goto 10

  • Crazy VIC-II

10 poke 53248+rnd(0)*46,rnd(0)*256: goto 10

  • Nutty VIC-II

10 poke 53248+24,rnd(0)*256: goto 10

  • Everything Random

10 poke 1024+rnd(0)*1000,78

20 poke 53248+24,timeand255

30 poke 53248+17,(time/10)and255

40 poke 53248+22,(time/9)and255

50 poke 54272 + rnd(0)*25,rnd(0)*256

60 poke 1024 + rnd(0)*1000,rnd(0)*256

70 goto 10

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