DATA Statement
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------


 Action

 Stores the numeric and string constants used by a program's  READ
 statements.


 Syntax

  DATA  constant-,  constant-...


 Remarks

 The  constant arguments can be any valid numeric or string constant.


 Note

 You cannot use ASCII 01 and 02 in data strings if you are going to compile
 to an executable program. The compiler (BC.EXE) uses ASCII 01 and 02
 internally to represent End-of-Statement and End-of-Line respectively. You
 can, however, still use 1 and 2 within the QBX environment.


 Names of symbolic constants (defined in a  CONST statement) that appear in
 DATA statements are interpreted as strings, rather than as names of
 constants. For example, in the following program fragment, the second data
 item is a string, PI, and not the value 3.141593.

 CONST PI=3.141593
 .
 .
 .
 DATA 2.20, PI,45,7
 .
 .
 .

 A  DATA statement can contain as many constants as will fit on a line. The
 constants are separated by commas. You can use any number of  DATA
 statements.


 Note

 If a string constant contains commas, colons, or leading or trailing spaces,
 enclose the string in double quotation marks.


 Null data items (indicated by a missing value) can appear in a data list as
 shown below.

 DATA 1,2,,4,5

 When a null item is read into a numeric variable, the variable has the value
 0. When a null item is read into a string variable, the variable has the
 null string value ("").

 When working in the QBX environment,  DATA statements can be entered only in
 the module-level code. BASIC moves all  DATA statements not in the
 module-level code to the module-level code when it reads a source file.
 READ statements can appear anywhere in the program.

  DATA statements are used in the order in which they appear in the source
 file. You may think of the items in several  DATA statements as one
 continuous list of items, regardless of how many items are in a statement or
 where the statement appears in the program.

 You can reread  DATA statements by using the  RESTORE statement.

  REM statements that appear at the end of  DATA statements must be preceded
 by a colon. Without a colon, BASIC interprets trailing  REM statements as
 string data.


 See Also

  READ,  RESTORE


 Examples

 The first example displays the current date by converting the date returned
 by the  DATE$ function.

 ' Use VAL to find the month from the string returned by DATE$.
 C$ = DATE$
 FOR I% = 1 TO VAL(C$)
     READ Month$
 NEXT
 DATA January, February, March, April, May, June, July
 DATA August, September, October, November, December

 ' Get the day.
 Day$ = MID$(C$, 4, 2)
 IF LEFT$(Day$, 1) = "0" THEN Day$ = RIGHT$(Day$, 1)
 ' Get the year.
 Year$ = RIGHT$(C$, 4)

 PRINT "Today is "; Month$; " "; Day$; ", "; Year$



 Output

 Today is September 21, 1989

 The following example shows how null data items are handled.

 DATA abc,,def
 DATA 1,,2
 READ A$, B$, C$       ' B$ = ""
 PRINT A$, B$, C$
 PRINT
 READ A, B, C          ' B = 0
 PRINT A, B, C


 Output

 abc                     def
 1           0           2