In my Optimizing Color BASIC series, one of the things I learned was how much faster it was to use HEX values instead of decimal values. For example:

A=65535
A=&HFFFF

Even though the second statement is one character more to parse, it is still much faster since it’s easier for the interpreter to calculate base-16 values than base-10. This was even the case for zero:

A=0
A=&H0

Somewhere in the comments, CoCoSDC creator Darren Atkinson let me know about using just a period for zero. I wrote tested that in part 9.

Recently (March 28), Carlos Comacho tagged me in the Facebook CoCo group about something he found on a NEC PC-6001 Z-80 computer testing various ways to set something to zero. Here is the screenshot he shared:

Using a decimal 0 and HEX &H0 were tested, as well as using VAL(“”). Huh?

In the CoCo 3 BASIC quick reference guide, I find this entry:

I am aware of using this to convert a STRING to a number, such as when using LINE INPUT:

10 LINE INPUT "ENTER YOUR AGE:";A$
20 A=VAL(A$)
30 IF A=42 THEN PRINT "ULTIMATE AGE!"

It also handles decimal values, such as A=VAL(“12.34”). And I guess I knew that if you passed it an empty string, it would return zero because pressing ENTER on a LINE INPUT prompt that then went into VAL would return 0…

Let’s do nothing!

Of course I had to benchmark this and see what CoCo did with it! Here’s the current version of my BASIC benchmark test:

0 REM BENCH0.BAS
5 DIM TE,TM,B,A,TT
10 FORA=0TO3:TIMER=0:TM=TIMER
20 FORB=0TO1000
30 Z=0
70 NEXT
80 TE=TIMER-TM:PRINTA,TE
90 TT=TT+TE:NEXT:PRINTTT/A:END

Running this produces a value of 189. Next we try HEX &H0:

0 REM BENCHX0.BAS
5 DIM TE,TM,B,A,TT
10 FORA=0TO3:TIMER=0:TM=TIMER
20 FORB=0TO1000
30 Z=&H0
70 NEXT
80 TE=TIMER-TM:PRINTA,TE
90 TT=TT+TE:NEXT:PRINTTT/A:END

That shows 174. Now let’s do the one with the period:

0 REM BENCHDOT.BAS
5 DIM TE,TM,B,A,TT
10 FORA=0TO3:TIMER=0:TM=TIMER
20 FORB=0TO1000
30 Z=.
70 NEXT
80 TE=TIMER-TM:PRINTA,TE
90 TT=TT+TE:NEXT:PRINTTT/A:END

That one gives me 147 – the fastest so far! And lastly, the silly VAL(“”) empty quote thing:

0 REM BENCHVAL.BAS
5 DIM TE,TM,B,A,TT
10 FORA=0TO3:TIMER=0:TM=TIMER
20 FORB=0TO1000
30 Z=VAL("")
70 NEXT
80 TE=TIMER-TM:PRINTA,TE
90 TT=TT+TE:NEXT:PRINTTT/A:END

This one gives me 212, even slower than decimal 0.

It looks like, on Color BASIC at least, the VAL(“”) trick is not useful, but I appreciate Carlos letting me know about it.

Have you seen this on any other flavor of BASIC? Let me know in the comments.

Until next time…