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In Applesoft BASIC, does combining statements into a single line speed up execution?

For example, would this:

10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD" : FOR I = 1 TO 100 : PRINT I : NEXT I

Run faster than this:

10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"
20 FOR I = 1 to 100
30 PRINT I
40 NEXT I
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2 Answers 2

Reset to default
4

Yes

Handling line end and a new lines start does take more time for the interpreter than skiping a colon.

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8

Yes. Replacing NEXT I with NEXT will also help.

One way to evaluate this is to throw a speaker click (PEEK -16336) into the loop and listen. The faster the loop, the higher the pitch. (Then try it with SP=-16336 outside the loop and PEEK SP in the loop, and note the effect that has...)

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  • Counterintuitively, on Commodore BASIC, "NEXT" is faster than "NEXT I". "NEXT" simply pops off the most recently nested FOR variable; "NEXT I" has to do pull I off the stack and then push back any more recent FOR loops (which can create some program execution fun).
    – Jim MacKenzie
    Commented Apr 3, 2018 at 16:48

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