NEW Does Work

In recent issues of COMPUTE! magazine, the wrongful statement has been made that Atari BASIC does not clear the VNT (Variable Name Table) when NEW is typed. Actually, it does.

I have no doubt that programs of the complexity of Laser Chess and Biker Dave need to be LISTed and ENTERed, not because of left-over variables, but rather because people tend to inadvertently insert variable names while typing or editing or by "dry running" an unfinished program to see how it's doing.

Jesse Warford

We stand corrected. NEW does indeed effectively clear the variable table. The procedure we have given does work, but users may choose to type NEW after LISTing the program, rather than turning the computer off.