Understanding the Basic commands on the Commodore range of computers is not too difficult for most people; but learning to put these commands together into a Basic program that actually does something can often be fraught with problems for the new owner. A little help in these early stages can save hours of frustration.

This book from Arcsoft provides you with over 100 routines and programs which you can use either by themselves for your own amusement or (with small alterations) as subroutines within your own programs.

Whilst these tips and tricks are generally short and simple they do provide a useful introduction to the more powerful but difficult Basic commands such as MID$, STR$, FOR... TO... STEP... NEXT and so on. The listings could be clearer, being in rather faint output from a dot-matrix printer, but at least they will therefore be free from typesetting errors and the print is a good size for reading.

There is one big drawback to this book: it was obviously originally written for the Vic 20 computer and very little has been changed to accommodate the CBM 64 machine. When I keyed a random selection of programs into my C64, I found at least 17 that wouldn't work on that machine!

In particular, not a single program in the section on graphics will run as it stands on the C64. To be sure, it is fairly simple to alter the routines, but if you know enough about Basic to do that, then this book will probably be too simple to be of much use to you.

The publisher's blurb on the jacket claims that each program has been tested on the Vic 20, but casually omits to mention the C64. No wonder!

Come to that, they also advertise 'a handy Appendix' which seems to have got lost at the printers.

In conclusion then, this book is likely to be of some value to Vic owners looking for a simple introduction to practical programming. But Commodore 64 owners would he better advised to spend their money elsewhere.