Conference 7.286::atarist

I use GFA Basic fairly often at home, so maybe I can help.
    
    I'm rather new in the GFA Basic world and have some basic questions.
    I use to run the PD "GFARO.PRG", all the files for that purpose
    had the extension "FILE.GFA".
                                    
That's right - GFARO.PRG wants to see GFA files in their GFA source
format.

    Now I got hands on the old version of GFA and a compiler, therefore
    I'm asking if some one can tell me the differenties of the file
    extensions.
    
    In the run only basic the file extension is ".GFA" how was it created
    in the first place ?

The GFA files were created by the GFA Basic interpreter, GFABASIC.PRG. That
is, the new version, version 3. The previous version was version 2. I should
also point out that this version numbering seems to only apply to the USA
version. I think I heard that the European versions were numbered differently.

    I can't load or list that extension in the new interpreter, it only
    use "FILE.BAS" or "FILE.LST".

The older GFA (USA version 2) interpreter used a source extension of BAS.
Apparently this was confusing to users of other Basic's, as they also used
an extension of BAS. So GFA switched from extension BAS to GFA.
The new interpreter, which reads Basic files with a GFA extension, cannot
read read Basic files generated by the old interpreter (BAS extension).

    Is it possible to convert a "FILE.GFA" to "FILE.BAS" and compile
    it ?

Yes it is. If it were not, a lot of us would have a lot of incompatible
software! The solution is to use the older version 2 interpreter to load
the BAS file. Then save this file with the SAVE,A command, saving it as a
list file. Exit this old interpreter and call the new version 3 interpreter.
Then pull in this list file with the MERGE command. At this point you
probably want to save it with the SAVE command, creating a GFA file, which
you will use from then on. If you should have the new GFA compiler, have
it read this GFA file to produce a PRG file which can be run standalone.

That should work, except for a minor incompatibility here and there. I've
converted about 8 of my programs this way, and only one gave me a bit of
a problem.

    Hope for an answer soon.
    
Hope this is soon enough Hans!

Correct me if I'm wrong but it sounded like Hans asked how to convert
.GFA to .BAS and Don explained how to do just the oposite, going from .BAS
to .GFA.  Based on Don's description I assume that going from .GFA to .BAS can
be done in a similiar procedure but Hans would not be able to do it as it
would require V3 of GFABASIC (and he has V2 or so I thought).

	Ray

    O.K.
    Yes I've got the old version V2 and it seems to cost me a few $ to
    invest in V3.
    Anyhow I think I'll stay with the V2 for a while and create my own
    programs.          
    I thought the run only was the old version, but obviously it's not.
    Thanks for yor info, now I know were and how to start.
    
    Thanks for Your quick reply.
    
    Hans.                

Yes, there was some confusion on my part regarding the direction of conversion.

But the conversion technique is still the same - the two versions of GFA Basic
only communicate with each other via a list file. As I mentioned, upward
compatibility is little or no problem. But going backward could involve lots
of conversion on your part, depending upon what features of version 3 were
used. The best bet is to simply try it and see how many errors you encounter.
No errors, and you have no problem. Lots of error messages and you may want
to consider buying version 3 of GFA Basic.

   -Don

    I only have access to the .GFA file, so I think we have to leave
    the problem.
    
    Thanks again.
    
    Hans.