CHKBAS(1)

NAME
chkbas - check and detokenize Atari BASIC SAVEd files

SYNOPSIS

chkbas [-atari] [-short] [-verbose] [-noinverse] [-tbs | -bxl | -bxe] basic-file [output-file]

DESCRIPTION

chkbas detokenizes Atari 8-bit BASIC SAVEd files. It lists the BASIC code in human-readable form, and gives some other useful information about the program.

basic-file is an Atari BASIC, TurboBASIC, BASIC XL, or BASIC XE program. Output will go to output-file, if given; otherwise, standard output. If basic-file is anything other than standard Atari BASIC, the BASIC dialect must be specified (see OPTIONS, below).

It's highly recommended to avoid running chkbas without redirecting or piping its output: If the program contains ATASCII graphics or inverse characters, they will be printed as-is to the terminal, which can confuse the terminal. For simply reading the code, pipe to a8cat(1), thus:

$ chkbas -atari PROGRAM.BAS | a8cat

Sample run, with no options:

$ chkbas HELLO.BAS
chkbas v1.10 (c) 1999-2001 Jindrich Kubec <kubecj@asw.cz>
chkbas v1.10 (c) 1999-2001 Jindrich Kubec <kubecj@asw.cz>
Atari Basic/Turbo Basic/Basic XL/Basic XE decompiler.
  Latest version can be found at http://www.asw.cz/~kubecj
  Published under GPL. See GPL.TXT.
  Thanks to Russ Gilbert for his SALVAGE programs.
Input file: HELLO.BAS
Constants & pointers:
Start of Name Table      (VNT)   : 000E
End of Name Table        (VNTE)  : 0011
Length of Name Table     (VNTL)  : 0004
Start of Variable Table  (VVT)   : 0012
End of Variable Table    (VVTE)  : 0021
Length of Variable Table (VVTL)  : 0010
Number of Variables      (NV)    : 0002
Start of Code            (STMTAB): 0022
Length of Code                   : 004E
Current command          (STMCUR): 0070
Length of current command        : 0013
First byte after program (STARP) : 0083
Length of file                   : 0083
File len difference              : 00000000
Variable table:
0001 STRING   (81) 00: SPoff: 0000 Len: 5 Dim: 10  A$
0002 SCALAR   (00) 01: 11 I
Main code starts here:
10 DIM A$(10)
20 A$="HELLO"
30 FOR I=1 TO 10
40 ? A$;" WORLD!"
50 NEXT I
Immediate code starts here:
32768 SAVE "H:HELLO.BAS"
Done!

OPTIONS

  Input Options

-tbs
    Treat input as a Turbo BASIC program.

-bxl
    Treat input as a BASIC XL program.

-bxe
    Treat input as a BASIC XE program, which may or may not be EXTENDed with code in the extra XE banks.

  Output Options

-atari
    Output only the program listing, with lines terminated by Atari EOL characters ($9B).

-short
    Output only the program listing, with lines terminated by the system default newline character(s), e.g. n on UNIX-like OSes, rn on MS-DOS or Windows.

-verbose
    Program listing will be interspersed with per-line and per-statement low-level information. This option is probably most useful for debugging chkbas itself.

EXIT STATUS

Zero for success, non-zero for failure.

COPYRIGHT

This utility is released under the GNU General Public License.

AUTHORS

This utility was written by Jindrich Kubec, AKA Jindroush.

This page was written by B. Watson <urchlay@slackware.uk>.

SEE ALSO

acvt(1), aext(1), bas2boot(1), chkbas(1), chkexe(1), chkrom(1).