Re: Evil Conspiracy!

[Linards Ticmanis <ticmanis@coli.uni-sb.de>]

Michael J. Mahon wrote:

> OK, so what's this syntactically incorrect statement _supposed_
> to produce when it '"work"(s) in any Applesoft-Equipped Apple II.'?


Type mismatch error I assume.

> So far I don't see any "666"s appearing.  ;-)


I guess you realized that my "background story" wasn't too serious. BTW, 
PRINT  ""+-0 is enough to send you into the monitor, and PRINT 0+""+-0 
is decent enough to crash a II+ and I assume also an unenhanced IIe. 
Since the 65C02 doesn't have any "crash" opcodes, it's clear that those 
machines will fail in some other way.

> Crashing into the monitor is not the best response to a syntax
> error, but this bug never pestered me.  (I was always more
> concerned about the floating-point bugs and the random number
> generator bug.)


The bug is sort of well-known for its very obscurity. I think it was 
found as an answer to the challenge "Crash your Commodore without using 
LOAD, POKE, PEEK, WAIT and/or SYS (i.e. CALL)." Remember this was a time 
when most micro OSs were small and almost bug-free, especially as far as 
crashers.


--

Linards Ticmanis

 The Master said, "The business of laying on the colors follows the
preparation of the plain ground."