Configuration guide

This documentation discusses how to change settings and options for PC-BASIC.

Changing settings

PC-BASIC has a number of settings that change the way it operates. Settings can be changed by setting options on the command line or through editing the configuration file. In either method, the options have the same name and syntax. In what follows, we will often refer to a particular option setting; remember that you can set this from the command line as well as from the configuration file.

Command-line options

You can enter command-line options if you start PC-BASIC from your operating system's command prompt, console or terminal (the C:\> prompt on Windows), by supplying the option with two dashes in front, like so:

On the command line, you can leave out the expression =True that is common in switching options. Some options have an alternative, short name consisting of a single letter preceded by a single dash, which you can use on the command line. You can combine multiple short options with a single dash.

Configuration files

You can change options by adding or removing lines in your local configuration file, which can be found in the following location:

Windows

%AppData%\pcbasic-0.0\PCBASIC.INI

OS X

~/Library/Application Support/pcbasic-0.0/PCBASIC.INI

Linux

~/.config/pcbasic-0.0/PCBASIC.INI

Change an option in the configuration file by adding a line in the section named [pcbasic], like so:

You cannot use positional arguments or the short name of options in the configuration file. You also cannot leave out the expression =True.

The configuration file should be a text file encoded in ASCII or UTF-8.