INPUT won't read commas

[Thomas Speziale]

I'm trying to read console input (to search for text). I found that PBCC 5.0 will not read a comma "," and says the length of the INPUT string is 0. If I enclose the comma with quotes on the input line then it reads just fine. The following code demonstrates the problem.

#COMPILE EXE
#DIM ALL

FUNCTION PBMAIN () AS LONG
DIM t$
PRINT "Inputting a comma returns an empty string."
PRINT
INPUT "input: "; t$
PRINT "output: "; t$
PRINT "Length = ";LEN(t$)
WAITKEY$
END FUNCTION

Is that a feature or a bug? I'd like to read those commas directly without having to explicity include the quotes.

Thanks!

[Mel Bishop]

Short answer: Change

INPUT "input: "; t$ to

LINE INPUT "input: ";t$

Longer answer: It's not a bug. INPUT was designed to handle comma delimited data files. For example, suppose you have a data base consisting of LastName, FirstName, and TelephoneNumber. You would structure the input something like:

INPUT #1,lName$, fName, tNumber. In this instance, $crlf would be treated as a comma.

Line Input, OTOH, only sees $crlf as the delimiter. It enters everything up to that point into a string.

[Thomas Speziale]

Thanks, Mel! That works. I thought there might be some connection with handling comma delimited fields but didn't think to use LINE INPUT.