Applesoft BASIC

Applesoft BASIC is the dialect of Microsoft BASIC that shipped with the Apple II series of computers. It was developed by Marc McDonald and Ric Weiland and supplied by Microsoft, and its name combines Apple and Microsoft. Apple staff, among them Randy Wigginton, adapted Microsoft's 6502 interpreter to the Apple II and added features. The first version came out in 1977 on cassette tape and lacked proper support for high-resolution graphics. A second version, Applesoft II, followed in 1978 on cassette and disk and in the ROM of the Apple II Plus and later models, with some syntax changes and high-resolution graphics commands. Applesoft supersedes Integer BASIC. Unlike that older interpreter it has floating-point numbers, string variables handled as single objects, multidimensional arrays, user-defined functions and error trapping. It is also called FP BASIC, after the Apple DOS command FP used to start it, while Integer BASIC was started with INT.