Applesoft BASIC was a dialect of Microsoft BASIC supplied with the Apple II series of computers.

It is this latter version, which has some syntax differences from the first as well as support for the Apple II high-resolution graphics modes, that most people mean by the term " Applesoft.

As Steve Wozniak, the creator of Integer BASIC and the only person who understood it well enough to add floating point features, was busy with the Disk II drive and controller and with Apple DOS, Apple turned to Microsoft, who was the BASIC vendor of choice after their success with Altair BASIC, and licensed a 10 KB assembly language version of BASIC dubbed " Applesoft.

* Applesoft BASIC ( Apple II family )

Like the Apple II +, IIe, and IIc, the IIGS also included Applesoft BASIC and a monitor ( which could be used for very simple assembly language programming ) in ROM, so they could be used even with no operating system loaded from disk.

Instead of the original Integer BASIC, the Apple II Plus firmware included the newer Applesoft II floating point BASIC.

Apple Computer licensed a more full-featured ( but also much slower ) BASIC from Microsoft soon after the Apple II was released in 1977, introduced some tweaks, named it Applesoft BASIC, and included the second version of it in the ROMs of the Apple II Plus, which was released in.

Applesoft BASIC was included in the ROMs of all Apple II models from the Apple II Plus forward, and eventually became the platform for far more programs than Integer BASIC.

These two features, some cassette tape I / O routines, and a few seldom-used floating point math routines ( which existed in the Integer BASIC ROMs but weren't integrated into the BASIC language ) were removed in the transition from the Integer BASIC ROMs to the Apple II Plus ROMs, in order to accommodate the larger size of the Applesoft BASIC interpreter.

It was developed for the Apple II and DOS as an example game to accompany his article about his GraBASIC, an Applesoft BASIC add-on, for the UpTime disk magazine.

Softporn Adventure was originally written for the Apple II in Applesoft BASIC.

One key feature of the MPF II was its Chinese BASIC, a version of Chinese-localized BASIC based on Applesoft BASIC.

However, the Apple II's Integer BASIC ROMs were replaced by Applesoft BASIC ROMs since the Apple II +, and the latter didn't contain the SWEET16 interpreter code.

Wigginton was one of the Apple employees who adapted Microsoft's 6502 BASIC for the Apple II ; it was dubbed Applesoft BASIC.

( The problematic ROUND function does not appear in Applesoft II, the version that most Apple II users are familiar with.

* Despite its heritage, Applesoft lacked commands common to most other Microsoft BASIC interpreters, such as INSTR ( which searched for a substring in a given string ; this had to be done manually with loops and the MID $ function ), PRINT USING ( which formatted numbers with commas and currency signs according to a format string ), and INKEY $ ( which checked for a keypress without stopping the program as Applesoft's GET command — analogous to the INPUT $ function — did, although a PEEK location did provide this functionality ).

His experiences testing Applesoft BASIC inspired him to design a competing product, called Notzo BASIC, which was never implemented.

The ROM revision for a specific Apple IIc is determined by entering the Applesoft BASIC programming language and typing in the command PRINT PEEK ( 64447 ) which returns the value indicating the particular ROM version.

( A popular speed optimizing technique in most interpreted BASICs — including Applesoft — is to put all frequently used constants into variables, because fetching the variable's value is faster than converting a number from text — a difference which becomes significant, given perhaps hundreds of iterations.

VTech owed much of this compatibility to the fact that they were able to license Applesoft BASIC ( which constitutes the largest and most complex part of an Apple II's ROM contents ) from Microsoft just as Apple did, heavily reducing the amount of code that had to be reimplemented.

The Applesoft BASIC Reference Manual includes a section entitled " Rounding can be Curious ", in which it is documented that the ROUND function, which rounds a number to a prescribed accuracy, is not monotonic: in other words, for some x and y, such that x < y, ROUND ( x )> ROUND ( y ).

The character became something of a cult anti-favorite, inspiring a homemade toy written in Applesoft BASIC called Kill Sammy, which let you murder the circus worker in a number of creative and gruesome ways, including electrocution, drowning, or chainsaw.

Applesoft BASIC was supplied by Microsoft and its name is derived from the names of both Apple and Microsoft.

The first version of Applesoft was released in 1977 only on cassette tape and lacked proper support for high-resolution graphics.

Applesoft was similar to ( and indeed had a common code base with ) Microsoft BASIC implementations on other 6502-based computers, such as Commodore BASIC: it used line numbers, and spaces were not necessary in lines.

While Applesoft was slower than Integer BASIC, it had many features that the older BASIC lacked:

Applesoft converted integer numbers to real before performing operations on them, converting the result back to an integer only if it was to be assigned to a ( 16-bit signed ) integer variable.

* The program was stored as a linked list of lines ; a or took O ( n ) ( linear ) time, and although Applesoft programs were not very long compared to today's software, on a 1 MHz 6502 this could be a significant bottleneck.

Microsoft's CLS command ( for clearing the screen ) was renamed HOME in Applesoft.

* There was a well-documented bug in Applesoft BASIC that could actually crash the interpreter if ONERR GOTO was in effect and numerous program errors occurred.

Later it was discovered by an enterprising hacker that the required code was actually in the Applesoft ROM ( though it was never executed ) and could be called there instead: CALL-3288 or ( equivalent ) 62248.

The original Math Blaster was written in Applesoft Basic and the Microsoft equivalent.

When running Apple DOS, it was possible ( at the expense of clearing the current BASIC program from memory ) to switch between Applesoft BASIC and Integer BASIC by typing either INT ( to enter Integer BASIC ) or FP ( to enter Applesoft BASIC )— provided, of course, that the requested language was either in ROM or loaded into RAM.

Shape tables were available from the BASIC interpreter in Applesoft BASIC and from machine code in the " Programmer's Aid " package that was bundled with the original Integer BASIC ROMs for that computer.

Applesoft BASIC was a favorite tool as it was widely available and allowed easy machine-level access through its PEEK and POKE statements.

The core was based on 6502 Microsoft BASIC, and as such it shares most of the core code with other 6502 BASICs of the time, such as Applesoft BASIC.

* In Applesoft BASIC, integer arithmetic was implemented on top of floating-point arithmetic, and there were no bitwise operators and no support for blitting of raster graphics ( even though the language supported vector graphics on the Apple II's raster hardware ).

It cited the presence of some of the same embedded strings, such as the name " James Huston " ( an Apple programmer ), and " Applesoft ," on both the Apple and Franklin system disks.

One key feature of the MPF III in some models was its Chinese BASIC, a version of Chinese-localized BASIC based on Applesoft BASIC.

Applesoft BASIC used the ampersand as an internal command, not intended to be used for general programming, that invoked a machine language program in the computer's ROM.

The new ROM firmware allowed Applesoft BASIC to recognize lowercase characters and work better with an 80-column display, and fixed several bugs from the IIe ROM.