Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-24454571-20140517053531/@comment-5334617-20140520132913

"the computer has to be told to READ through it enough times to get to the end, otherwise... Hmm... I don't know what is going on here - would the Pointer skip to the next DATA line?"

Actually, no. The computer doesn't HAVE to get to the end. Otherwise... the crane hovers in the middle of the program code, when you're finished. And that does no harm. There's no requirement for every DATA to be the subject of a READ, you don't have to get to the end.

At the beginning of running a program, the pointer is a the first line of code. Whenever a RESTORE happens, the pointer moves to the label after the RESTORE keyword. Whenever a READ happens, the pointer moves one DATA element forward. It is true that every READ must have a DATA element, but the converse is not true, that every DATA element must be the subject of a READ. A single DATA element can be READ once, or not at all - or several times, if RESTORE is used - and all of these situations are just fine.