INK 8 and DIM issues (*solved*)

[boriel]

A question, if I may:
One of the things that tripped my listing up was that the compiler doesn't distinguish between a variable called 'a' and a variable called 'a$'. The listing I was trying to compile used 'a' to store an integer and 'a$' to store a String, but the compiler treated both as the same variable, declared it as an Integer and then ran into errors trying to assign it a String value. Easy to fix from my point of view with a little search and replace, but is that expected behaviour?

Yes, it is: BASICally I follow the FreeBasic convention, which states just that, but trying to maintain the original Sinclair BASIC compatibility as much as possible.

I agree it might be confusing at first. But trying to include sigils ($ symbols) into the namespace might be a little difficult at this stage. I'll see what I could do: probably another compilation flag, or just add it to the --sinclair flag.

I've been very surprised at how quickly I managed to get the listing (almost) working - an hour's worth of fiddling and it was compiling and mostly running, which is definitely the best experience I've ever had with a Spectrum BASIC compiler. Many thanks for your excellent work!

Thanks a lot. I've been somewhat busy with my PhD, but I hope to make some improvements from now on.
To convert a listing I use BASIN editor. I load the original BASIC into BASIN an then export it as ASCII. This saves me a lot of time. But there's some improvements suggested by LCD and britlion I would also like to include.