A somewhat belated reaction to Carl Lawrenson's article "Vu-File Unchained" (issue 86).
He states that we are bragging every spare byte here, when converting the Basic to Microdrive and sacrficing unnecessary 'frills'.
Not being an expert nor a user of Vu-File, I still think it is normal practice, when you are pressed for memory space, to use VAL "numerical expression" and SGN PI for 1, not PI for 0. If I remember correctly this will save three bytes each time.
For fun I typed in the changes to Mr. Lawrenson's listing and recorded a saving of 70 bytes (from 251 to 181 bytes), but if it is substantial, you could save a lot of memory by going through the entire listing and changing it in this way, saving a few of the frills and perhaps each make room for another Microdrive?
A final nit-pick - in the article, the save name is given as "Vu-File"; in the No 2 listing as "Vu-FILE", which makes a difference of course.
Congratulations on an informative and readable magazine, by the way.
12th January 1985
