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The READ OUT
and WRITE IN
commands are the
output and input commands in INTERCAL; they allow
communication between the program and its user. There was a numeric I/O
mechanism implemented in INTERCAL-72, and it (or trivial
variants) have been likewise implemented in all more modern variants.
However, it had some obvious deficiences (such as not being able to
read its own output) which meant that other methods of I/O were
implemented in C-INTERCAL and CLC-INTERCAL.
The syntax of READ OUT
and WRITE IN
is the
same in all cases: the name of the command followed by an
intersection-separated list of items; the form of each item, the
compiler you are using, and its command line arguments together
determine what sort of I/O is used, which can be different for
different elements in the list.
• INTERCAL-72 I/O: | Spelt-out numbers and Roman numerals | |
• C-INTERCAL I/O: | The Turing Tape I/O system | |
• CLC-INTERCAL I/O: | Baudot and mingled binary |