Microsoft KB Archive/69156

= Underscore+CR+LF Added Before DATA Statement If > 250 Columns =

Article ID: 69156

Article Last Modified on 11/21/2006



This article was previously published under Q69156



SYMPTOMS
If an indented DATA statement in a program exceeds the 250th column and the program is then saved as ASCII text in the QB.EXE or QBX.EXE environment, then an underscore (_) plus a carriage return (CR, ASCII value 13) plus a linefeed (LF, ASCII value 10) will be added immediately in front of the DATA statement. The actual data contents in the DATA statement will not not changed.

The addition of &quot;_&quot; in front of the DATA statement occurs only if the last character in the DATA statement exceeds the 250th column, and the DATA statement is immediately preceded on the same line by spaces, a line number, line label, or other code.



STATUS
Microsoft has confirmed this to be a bug in QB.EXE in Microsoft QuickBasic versions 4.00, 4.00b, and 4.50 for MS-DOS; in QB.EXE in Microsoft Basic Compiler versions 6.00 and 6.00b (buglist6.00 and buglist6.00b) for MS-DOS; and in QBX.EXE in Microsoft Basic Professional Development System (PDS) versions 7.00 and 7.10 for MS-DOS (buglist7.00 and buglist7.10). Microsoft is researching this problem and will post new information here in the Microsoft Knowledge Base as it becomes available.

If the DATA statement is in the first column on the line or if the file is saved using Fast Load and Save format, then the problem does not occur (whether or not the line exceeds the 250th column).

The added &quot;_&quot; characters have no affect on the performance of the QuickBasic program, and in QB.EXE or QBX.EXE, the &quot;_&quot; characters just appear as an extra space. Each save in ASCII text format will add what appears to be an additional space in front of the DATA statement. Note that you can only see the &quot;_&quot; characters if you type the file in DOS or load the file into a standard text editor.



MORE INFORMATION
However, the problem does have an adverse affect if you load a line-numbered program into the GW-Basic or BasicA Interpreter. In GW-Basic or BasicA, the file is loaded only up to the &quot;_&quot;. The rest of the file is ignored and the message &quot;Direct Statement In File&quot; appears. For example, make the following line-numbered DATA statement exceed 250 characters, save it as an ASCII text file in QB.EXE or QBX.EXE, then try to load the file into GW-Basic or BasicA:   100 DATA 123,1234567890,1234567890, ... ,1234567890

Additional query words: QuickBas BasicCom buglist4.00 buglist4.00b buglist4.50

Keywords: KB69156

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