
Reading text-files is pretty straightforward. You don't even have to open a file in text-mode contrary to other languages. Just open the file and call 'REFILL' until it signals end-of-file (EOF):
\ Example program. It reads a file line by line
\ and prints it to the screen.
256 string line \ define string
" readln.4th" line copy \ make filename
input open \ open file
if \ if successfully opened
input file \ read from file
begin
refill \ read a line
while \ while EOF not found
0 word \ copy to pad
type \ print it
cr \ terminate line
repeat \ read next line
else
." Could not open file" cr quit
then \ print error message
You will find that if you run this program, it will print itself to the screen.
'REFILL' will return a non-zero value if EOF was *NOT* detected. By using the word '0=' you can invert this value. Finally, it will read Unix ASCII-files as well as DOS ASCII-files.