Programming

There are a few commands in ROBOT which enable simple ``programs'' to be constructed. Warning: these are all prototype and their formats and functionality may change. They're also presently a little limited.
VARIABLE - define a name to be used as a ``variable''. Variable names are <#62#>not<#62#> case sensitive. All variables are floating point. Argument: variable name.
ASSIGN - assigns a value to one of several user accessible variables. Arguments: (i) variable name, (ii) value. The default variable names available are A1, A2, A3, A4 and A5 together with any assigned using the VARIABLE command. These are ``global'' in the sense that instructions inside a FILE know all variable values.
LOOP - enables a simple FORTRAN-like do loop. Argument: start value for loop, end value for loop and increment value for each iteration of the loop. This is presently rather limited - you can't nest loops and only approximately 100 commands may be contained inside each loop. When you are inside a loop the variable ``LOOP'' which is the value of the loop parameter may be used in arguments for other commands.
IF - the argument is evaluated and the following commands are executed if the argument is positive.
ELSEIF - argument is evaluated and following commands executed if argument is positive.
ELSE - following commands are executed if preceding IF or ELSEIF had a negative argument.
ENDIF - terminates an IF block. This <#63#>must<#63#> be used.

IF statements can be nested. The FILE command may be used to create simple subroutine type structures - albeit with no arguments or returned values apart from those set using ASSIGN. The degree to which FILE commands may be contained inside a file called by a FILE command depends on the number of open files allowed by your operating system.