From: craigberry@nospam.mac.com   
      
   On 1/31/25 4:05 PM, Dan Cross wrote:   
      
   > Treating -1 as true in BASIC seems rather common, from the quick   
   > survey I did; I speculate that this is almost certainly due to   
   > the bit representation of -1 having all bits set, while in BASIC   
   > the integer type is (usually?) signed, thus -1 on a two's   
   > complement machine.  I wonder what the original DTSS BASIC did?   
      
   I had a quick look at:   
      
   https://ia601901.us.archive.org/34/items/bitsavers_dartmouthB_36   
   9804/BASIC_4th_Edition_Jan68_text.pdf   
      
   and didn't see an obvious answer, though I didn't read the whole thing   
   and could've missed something.  The exact values of true and false might   
   well have been considered an implementation detail that should not be   
   relied on.   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)