What is the name of the back arrow key on top left corner of the C64 Keyboard?
Is it escape or back? Also I don't recall using this key. What was the intended usage of it?
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Sign up to join this communityWhat is the name of the back arrow key on top left corner of the C64 Keyboard?
Is it escape or back? Also I don't recall using this key. What was the intended usage of it?
According to this source, which seems to have been written with visibility of ANSI X3.4-1963, the original ASCII standard, it's simply "a left-pointing arrow. This character was used as an assignment operator in some programming languages."
The character lives on in unicode as U+2190 where it has the formal name "LEFTWARDS ARROW".
It's unlikely to have been an influence on Commodore, but ← continued to serve as an assignment operator at least as late as Smalltalk-80:
x <- 2 + 2
would be typed and shown as x _ 2 + 2
. It's now recommended to use :=
(ie. :
followed by =
) as assignement-operator (like in Pascal) instead. The up-arrow was used for "return a value from function", and has been replaced - both key and font - with the ^
in Smalltalk. Not sure how this related/worked with C64 though...
Mar 22, 2017 at 21:19
It actually typed a left-pointing arrow. It's from an early version of ASCII (1963 rather than the "modern" 1967 version) that was used for the basis of PETSCII; in the 1967 version of ASCII we know and love today, this character was replaced with an underscore. I don't recall if it has a name; it's probably just "left-arrow" or something.
I only recall it as being referred to as 'left arrow' but I think it also had a function when used with the Control key, as some of the other keys did. For example in programming you might type: PRINT "Q" (was that the clear screen command, does anyone remember?) or PRINT " <-" There were different CTRL- combinations that moved the cursor around, cleared the screen and so on...