1 Information about BIF as of April 2019.
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3 Joel Matthew Rees, Amagasaki, Hyogo, Japan.
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4 https://ja.osdn.net/projects/bif-6809/
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5 joel.rees+knock@gmail.com
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6 http://reiisi.blogspot.com
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7 https://defining-computers.blogspot.com/
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8 https://ja.osdn.net/users/reiisi/
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9 https://sourceforge.net/u/reiisi/profile/
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11 Copyright 2000, 2019 Joel Matthew Rees
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15 (The following can be found in its original form in the bif-c
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16 repositories. bif-c is buggy, by the way.)
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20 BIF was a dialect of the early fig-standard FORTH. It was a student
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21 project, not a commercial product, and no warranty has ever been made
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22 concerning it, whatsoever. It was written on the Color Computer 2 in
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23 6809 assembler; the assembler used was disk EDTASM+. It also ran on
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24 the Color Computer 3, with the expected limitations of requiring the
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25 32 column screen, etc.
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27 License information -- the rights to BIF and the materials with it,
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28 and restrictions on distribution -- are described in the file
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29 BIFDOC.TXT, which really should distributed with the source along with
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32 The short version of the licensing information is that I am distributing
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33 BIF6809 under the essential terms of the Internet Systems Consortium
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37 Permission to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute this software for
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38 any purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the
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39 accompanying copyright notices and this permission notice appear in
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42 THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND ISC DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES
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43 WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
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44 MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL ISC BE LIABLE FOR ANY
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45 SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES
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46 WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN
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47 AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION,
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48 ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS
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52 I add here the stipulation that I claim right to the word "BIF" as
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53 the name of a programming language.
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55 If you are going to distribute or redistribute the obect or source of
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56 bif in any of its forms, it really makes no sense not to include the
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57 BIFDOC.TXT and this README.TXT. If you do something like that and
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58 you or anyone that gets the results has problems with it, and you come
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59 to me looking for help, expect to be teased mercilessly about it. And
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60 expect to be on the bottom of my priority list, not out of spite,
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61 out of self-protection.
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65 I have reconstructed something approximating my source disks (using the
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66 great emulator, xroar: https://www.6809.org.uk/xroar/ and the imgtool
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67 distributed with MAME, along with the *nix tools). Some useful commands
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68 are noted in commands.txt.
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70 The name of the disk image is (appropriately?) bifsource.dsk. It can be
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71 directly attached by xroar's disk emulator tools, and should be similarly
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72 useable with VCC, MAME, etc. al.
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76 The assembler source files are readable by the a variety of text editors,
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77 that respond flexibly about line termination. But if you try editing them
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78 with a normal editor and then assembling the result with EDTASM+, be very
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79 careful about line termination. Be prepared to use *nix command line tools
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80 like tr, cut, sed/awk, perl, etc.
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82 The source files retain the original line numbers as used by EDTASM+,
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83 which is why you will want the *nix tools. But I have included source to a
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84 short C program, stripln.c, which strips the line numbers. This program
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85 may also be useful for converting line endings, if that is necessary. Look
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86 for it in the junkbox directory, and be prepared to compile it.
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88 If you are under the burden of using Microsoft OSses, the Cygwin project
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89 should be of quite a bit of assistance, including the *nix command line
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90 tools and gcc and clang, etc.
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94 Macros are used in the source, but shouldn't cause too much confusion
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95 to a programmer with assembler experience. If anyone is brave enough
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96 to try to port it, key routines will be EMIT, KEY, ?TERMINAL, CR, R/W,
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97 and several routines in the EDITOR vocabulary where I used direct
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98 video I/O out of laziness.
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102 BIF might be useful for experimentation and for learning about FORTH,
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103 for someone who has access to a Color Computer or an emulator. The
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104 executable file may be run on the Color Computer by LOADMing it via
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105 Color Computer Disk BASIC. (More details in BIFDOC.TXT.)
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107 It is assembled to be EXECed at hexadecimal 1300 (&H1300).
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111 One specific warning must be given:
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113 DO NOT ATTEMPT TO ACCESS ORDINARY DISKS FORMATTED FOR USE BY OTHER
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114 OPERATING SYSTEMS WHILE BIF IS RUNNING! Because of disk buffering, it
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115 will be difficult to avoid unintentional writes to the disk.
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117 If you do try looking at an OS-9 or Color Computer DOS (etc.) disk with
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118 BIF, don't blame me if you destroy the directory and/or other valuable
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123 I tried a re-write in C (bif-c), but it's not working well. Issues with
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124 file systems (no real file system in BIF) and the current standardization
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125 committees ideas about what is meaningful code, problems with my own
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126 attention span, etc. keep it full of bugs. And I used a number of neat
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127 tricks that get in the way in C.
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129 One thing I want to retain is the use of nested binary trees in the
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132 Incidentally, said re-write has been in process for over thirty years.
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133 Real life keeps getting in the way.
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137 I am including source to a Q&D C program, 32col.c, which will re-format
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138 files extracted from BIF disks for normal text editors. Mac-isms and
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139 Codwarrior-isms can probably be discerned by comparing it with stripln.c,
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142 When I brought the BIF high-level source with me, I used some feature of
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143 Color Computer BASIC and BIF that I have forgotten to dump some of the
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144 Forth style screen listings.
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146 The program stripln can be used to strip line numbers from such screen
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147 listings, as well.
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149 The documentation is ASCII text, with CR/LF line termination, and should
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150 be examined carefully by anyone considering a port. Bear in mind that
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151 it was written toward Color Computer users.
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153 I apologize for not alphabetizing the FORTH words by name. I did it once
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154 with a C program, but got too ambitious and lost the results in the
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155 process of trying to split it up into modules. I haven't had enough time
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156 to finish the modularization, yet, either. (Getting an iBook so I could
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157 work on the train just gave me more things to do on the train.)
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159 Files in this distribution --
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161 6809 Assembly Language Source files:
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166 general explanations, including descriptions of every word.
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168 structure of the per-user variable page.
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170 macros, including the inner interpreter (basis of the virtual machine),
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171 the dictionary (symbol table) structure offsets,
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172 and invocations for the fundamental objects.
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174 things kept in the direct page,
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175 including the behaviours for the fundamental objects (was not a good idea after all),
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176 and the index to the per user variable page.
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178 cold and warm boot routines and the initial value table for the per-user variable page.
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180 the main source file (includes other parts),
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181 basic expression evaluation, more of the inner interpreter,
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182 basic vocabulary access, basic symbol parsing.
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184 basic I/O, more of the inner interpreter, extended expression evaluation,
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185 the rest of the basic symbol table access.
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187 data movers, common expression evaluation,
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188 stack pointer access, more of the inner interpreter,
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189 high-level compiler.
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191 common expression evaluation, extended expression evaluation,
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192 innards of the high-level compiler, more of the high-level compiler,
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193 compiler directive.
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195 more common expression evaluation, common constants,
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196 I/O constants, character typing constants,
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197 symbol table globals, compiler globals, parser globals, I/O globals.
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199 compiler globals, more high-level compiler,
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200 more common expression evaluation, formatted output.
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202 more basic symbol table, symbol table, more compiler, more formatted output,
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203 more data movers, more low-level parser (formatted input), more I/O,
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204 more extended expression evaluation, more expression evaluation,
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205 more compiler directives, an extension to the inner interpreter.
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207 more formatted output, more innards of the high-level compiler,
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208 more high-level compiler.
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210 more innards of the expression evaluator, more common expression evaluation,
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211 more I/O (buffer handling).
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213 more high-level compiler, more compiler directive.
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215 more innards of the high-level compiler, more I/O (buffering),
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216 disk access, error handling, more formatted output.
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218 more error handling, screen-based sector (character) editor.
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220 more parser (formatted input), I/O (terminal), compiler (input),
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221 symbol table (lookup).
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223 symbol table, compiler innards, null vector test,
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224 more screen-based sector editor.
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226 compiler, formatted output, compiler directives
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228 error handling, symbol tables, compiler directives.
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231 C language source and Macintosh executables for stripping line
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232 numbers and reformatting 32 column source code "screens". The two
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233 XXX.GXX.out files below are output of the 32col program.
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237 Hopefully, I will shortly have time to reconstruct useful things from the
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238 following files on the tools.dsk disk image and/or the cs431 disk image:
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240 TOOLS.G00, TOOLS.G00.out
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241 FORTH source for disk listing, screen handling, definition dumping,
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242 sector copying, forward referencing, buffer maintenance,
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243 experimenting with hardware, double (32 bit) integer math, etc.,
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244 and a post-fix assembler.
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245 PAIRS.G28, PAIRS.G28.out
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246 a "database" example from one of my FORTH books.
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247 TOOLS_G00_ERRORS.text
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248 Contains the tools output readable in regular text editor format
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249 and the error messages, with their corresponding number in
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250 hexadecimal. I should make a separate file for the error messages
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258 some math for CS431.
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260 test suite for CS431.
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