DOCUMENTATION FOR WC.BAS, v. 1.0
                copyright 1985 by Gregory Sandow

	At 488 bytes (with the copyright notice removed) this 
program isn't as compact as it might be. But writers will love 
it. It counts words in a text file, and counts them fast: it 
counts 2000 words in barely two seconds. It's accurate, too.
	It's fast because the routine that counts the words is 
written in machine language. That leads to a familiar difficulty:
version one of WC may not be compatible with other machine 
language programs. See below for details. If you don't use other 
machine language programs, you don't have anything to worry 
about.
	WC is simple to use. You'll be asked for the .DO file you
want to count. Type its name (you can leave out the .DO extension
), then hit ENTER. Moments later you'll have the count. Then 
you'll see a prompt asking "More?" If you want to count another 
file, type "y". Any other key returns you to the menu--with one 
exception. I've added a handy little feature: type "e" and you'll
be sent directly into TEXT. You'll be asked which file you want 
to edit. Type the name (again there's no need to add .DO), hit 
ENTER, and you're at the start of the file, ready to go. (I added
this feature so I could write, leave my writing, count how many 
words long it is, and then return to my work without going 
through the menu.)
	On conflicts with other machine language programs: WC 
isn't yet relocatable. It runs at the top of the Model 100's RAM,
from 62864 to 62959. It clears those locations when it's 
finished, allowing you to fill memory right to the top (though if
you do and then try to run WC you'll get an error message, 
because there won't be enough memory free for it). Because it 
clears those locations, it IS compatible with most M/L programs 
saved as .CO files; they too load into high memory and then clear
themselves. Exception: Jim Irwin's PRN100 and any other program 
that loads into high memory and then protects itself until you 
remove it from your machine. If WC finds HIMEM set any lower than
62690 it won't run. (If you don't understand any of this, don't 
worry. Try WC; either it will run or it won't. If not, there's no
harm done; if you need it more than the M/L programs you've 
already got, remove them, clear memory by going to basic and 
typing CLEAR 0, MAXRAM, and then try WC again.) Future versions 
of WC--if and when I get to them, will be relocatable, and will 
load directly under any M/L programs you already have.
	Quibbles about accuracy: every word count program has its
own ideas about what counts as a word. WC thinks hyphenated words
are two words; that's because making that assumption allowed me 
to handle both hyphens and dashes with a subroutine I'd already 
written for spaces, carriage returns, linefeeds, and tabs, which 
helped make the program more compact. WC thinks empty files have 
one word (or "1 words," as it will ungrammatically tell you). 
Why? Because it gives you a figure one word higher than the 
number it actually counts. If you don't like this feature, remove
the characters "+1" from line 5 of the program so the line reads:

 CALLS:PRINTPEEK(S+64)+(256*PEEK(S+65))"words"

I myself prefer WC to add one to its count because it won't 
recognize anything that doesn't end in a space, hyphen, tab, or 
carriage return as a word. That means it's apt to come out one 
word short in my text files, since they usually end with the 
period closing their last sentence. All this is rather nitpicky 
detail; I've indulged in it just to be complete, or maybe just in
case someone's entered a "25 words or less" contest (do they 
still have those?) and needs to the know whether WC will give an 
ABSOLUTELY accurate count. It would have been easy enough to 
write code to handle these slightly absurd details (even 
including the ungrammatical "1 words" announcement), but on a 
machine with limited  memory it simply didn't seem worth the 
extra bytes. One detail that might matter a little more: WC knows
about ellipses, which are not uncommon in coy or scholarly 
writing. Example: it will correctly tell you that "I . . . love 
you" consists of three words. But WC will be helpless if for any 
mad reason you use other punctuation in a similar way: it will 
think, for example, that  "Hey ! ! ! you" is five words.
	Future revisions (if I get to them): relocatable code. 
Write the WHOLE program in machine language. Add a wrinkle to the
"edit" exit, allowing a one keystroke return to the file WC just 
counted.
	WC is freely given to the members of this SIG, in 
gratitude for all the fine programs, information, and advice 
they've given me. (I want to acknowledge a special debt to Robert
Covington's ROM map.) You may remove the copyright notice for 
your own use. You may give copies of the program to friends, but 
only with the copyright notice intact. Feel free to contact me 
with questions or comments, but note that I'm only irregularly on
the SIG. I and might not see your message before it scrolls off. 
Better to send EMAIL, or whatever they're calling it now.