VER26.TXT	28-Mar-2008

The most significant change to XPL0 version 2.6 is that now variables can
be declared after procedures. This makes it easier to break programs up
into separate files, which can make them more modular and easier to
understand and manipulate.

For example, oftentimes there is a group of procedures that share common
variables that are not used by the rest of the program. You can now put
these procedures and their variables into a single file and 'include' the
file in the main body of the program. Previously, these global variables
had to be declared at the beginning of the program.

Another advantage of this feature is that you can now declare a variable
immediately above the Main procedure if that's the only place it's used.
For example, if you use "I" as a scratch index in Main, it's nice if "I"
is not global to the entire program, where it might mistakenly be used by
a nested procedure.

Sometimes it's convenient to think in terms of binary instead of hex. The
percent sign can now be used to represent a binary number. For example,
%10011100 is the same value as $9C.

Because binary numbers can blur into a meaningless string of 1's and 0's,
underlines can be used to separate them (%1001_1100 = $9C).

For consistency underlines can be inserted into any number. For example,
$12_34, or 123_456.78. The underlines are simply ignored by the compiler.
Underlines may also appear in any number read in by the intrinsics IntIn,
HexIn and RlIn.

There are also a few, very minor, bug fixes.

-Loren Blaney
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