;
) used by C, Perl, Java, and other languages). Instead,
a statement simply ends when the next one starts.
Whitespace is allowed almost anywhere. The only exception is inside keywords (so IGNORE cannot be written IG NORE) and numbers (so #65535 is not the same as #655 35). However, if a keyword already contains a space (like COME FROM), more can be added to keep it company, or the lone space can be removed.
A statement consists of up to five fields; only the second and fifth are required, the rest being optional. When the compiler is looking for the start of a statement, it will look for anything which resembles the contents of the first or the second field and take it from there. The five fields are:
¬
(this is the symbol for logical negation, if the
font is ISO-8859-1). See the discussion on ABSTAIN FROM in
the chapter about Statements.
%
) followed by an expression. Before executing the statement,
the value is calculated: if it is 100 or over, the statement is executed.
Otherwise, the statement might or might not be executed, and the
probability of executing it is the value of the expression. For
compatibility with INTERCAL-72, which only accepted constant probabilities,
constants can be written without the leading "#", i.e. "%#50" can be
written simply "%50".
DON'T PANIC
PLEASE DO NOT PANIC
PLEASE ¬ PANIC
DO¬PANIC
DONOTPANIC