Microsoft BASIC and other BASIC interpreters for early microcomputers and PCs supported several techniques designed to reduce the effort required to type in source code. However, greatly reduces the readability of the BASIC source code, and renders the source incompatible with many mainframe-based BASIC systems.

unsquish is a program to convert such compact BASIC code to a more readable and portable format.

Target source compression techniques:

  1. No whitespace required between statement elements.
  2. "?" abbreviation for "PRINT" keyword.
  3. Multiple statements per line separated by colons. Do not split on: