this program was generated by chat gpt. I did have to lightly edit it because it tried to use the symbol "&" in place of the symbol ";" in print commands, otherwise it all came from this prompt:

create qb64pe source code that allows the user to select from a displayed list of 10 entries.

Rowin and Martin's Laugh IN aside,

I don't quite get this about _OS$.

The wiki states _OS$ ireturns the operating system that compiled the program. So If I compile a program in Windows, and a Linux user gets the .exe file, and runs it., all the _OS$ conditional statements can do is to indicate to the Linux user the exe was compiled on a Windows OS.

It seems to me we would be better off having it or something else identify the OS the exe is actually running on, but maybe I'm missing some value here. I haven't used it before.

Pete

I was just wondering if there is way to change the color of a value which is displaying on a screen. For example, something like this


Screen _NewImage(1900, 900, 32)
$Color:32

A$ = "5"
Color White
_PrintString (100, 100), A$
Color Green
_printstring (100,100), color green



So the value 5 is displaying on the screen in white however, later on in the program I want that value to pop out if certain conditions apply. Present coding requires a complete repeat of the value plus the new color but if I just want to change the color only at that same location doesn't appear color only can be changed? or might there be a way???

one of my facebook groups has gone insane with christmas stars and somebody posted a much simpler version of this that I just had to dress up and add options to.

press any key for a new Christmas star
press c to copy the values to the clipboard, if you see one you want to try to use elsewhere (for windows users, edit it out if you can't use the clipboard command)
press <ESC> to quit

I have been using this code to call the screen saver and blank the windows screen:

But for some reason it stopped working!?

Does anyone know of a screen saver function call that actually works?

Thanks, Erik.

Some randomly decorated ascii xmas trees.

You might think this keyword was leftover from TurtleBASIC, but you'd be wrong. It's actually from DOS.

SHELL is a very versatile way to either call a DOS command or run another app while staying in your current program.

SYNTAX SHELL [_DONTWAIT] [_HIDE] [DOSCommand$]

_DONTWAIT means continue on in our program flow instead of hanging until the call or program started is finished or terminated.

_HIDE means don't show the cmd.exe console window.

Hiding the console is usually preferred. If _HIDE prevents the program from launching, try adding cmd /c to the SHELL.

Waiting is useful if the app or DOS function you are accessing needs to pass information back to your program. SHELL "Dir" (and piped to a file - we'll discus piping later...) to get the directory info into the next part of your program, for instance.

So let's continue by discussing some other improvements from when this keyword was used in QBasic.

In Windows 98 and prior, we had to use COMMAND\c with our SHELLcall. command.exe was the command prompt then, but sometime after Windows 98, M$ remade the command prompt, and called it cmd.exe. We then used CMD /c in our SHELL calls. Well, along comes QB64 and guess what, cmd /c, forgetaboutit! We don't need it anymore, well, that isn't quite true. QB64 takes care of the command prompt call for us, but it fails once in awhile. (See the example marked INCLUDE PATH, a few lines below).

QB64 can use long path folder names and file names and SHELL command lines can be longer than 124 characters. (Wiki).

So now let's discuss some SHELL components and common ways to use SHELL:

A QBasic SHELL component we can still use in QB64 is START. START is an alternative to _DONTWAIT, and has one added advantages, switches...

Switches in a SHELL START to another app tell the operating how to launch it.

Commonly used switches:

/min Launch minimized to the taskbar.

/max Launch it full screen.

/p Send any text file called with the app to the printer.

Example: Launch Wordpad minimized to print a text file...

Remember, since we are using START we do not have to use _DONTWAIT in this example.

Apparently somebody tried to get it to write a game for the Atari VCS, so why not try BASIC? The results could be amusing! LoL

https://www.reddit.com/r/Atari2600/comme...the_atari/

A goofy little seasonal graphics demo.   Uses some of the techniques I've been using in my sprite mixer programs and puts them to use.