Choose For Random Strings In Commodore 64 BASIC

Question

I have this variable declarations on my program:

X="MAGENTA"
Y="CYAN"
Z="TAN"
A="KHAKI"

Now what I want is to randomly choose one of these and PRINT it. But how to do this?

Answer 1

My BASIC is pretty rusty but you should just be able to use something like:

10 X$ = "MAGENTA"
20 Y$ = "CYAN"
30 Z$ = "TAN"
40 A$ = "KHAKI"
50 N = INT(RND(1) * 4)
60 IF N = 0 THEN PRINT X$
70 IF N = 1 THEN PRINT Y$
80 IF N = 2 THEN PRINT Z$
90 IF N = 3 THEN PRINT A$

or, putting it in a subroutine for code re-use:

  10 X$ = "MAGENTA"
  20 Y$ = "CYAN"
  30 Z$ = "TAN"
  40 A$ = "KHAKI"
  50 GOSUB 1000
  60 PRINT RC$
  70 END

1000 TV = INT(RND(1) * 4)
1010 IF TV = 0 THEN RC$ = X$
1020 IF TV = 1 THEN RC$ = Y$
1030 IF TV = 2 THEN RC$ = Z$
1040 IF TV = 3 THEN RC$ = A$
1050 RETURN

Of course, you probably should be using arrays for that sort of thing so you can just use:

10 DIM A$(3)
10 A$(0) = "MAGENTA"
20 A$(1) = "CYAN"
30 A$(2) = "TAN"
40 A$(3) = "KHAKI"
50 PRINT A$(INT(RND(1)*4))