Programmed Inquiry, Learning, or Teaching (PILOT) is a simple high-level programming language developed in the 1960s,  developed by John Amsden Starkweather, a psychology professor at the University of California, San Francisco medical center. In 1962, he developed a simple language for automating learning tests called Computest. Starting in 1968, he developed a follow-on project called PILOT

 As with LOGO, it was an early foray into the technology of computer-assisted instruction (CAI) or Computer Assisted Learning (CAL)

Apple PILOT which ran on Apple II had extensions to core PILOT including arrays and floating point numbers. Apple further developed PILOT into SuperPILOT which had 22 commands.

PILOT has a similar structure to BASIC and FORTRAN in layout and structure. Its keywords are single characters, T for "type" to print text, or A for "accept", to input values from the user.

PILOT  syntax: an optional label, a command letter, an optional Y (for yes) or N (for no), an optional conditional expression in parentheses, a colon, an operand, or multiple operands delimited by commas.

A label can also be alone in a line, not followed by other code. The syntax for a label is an asterisk followed by an identifier (alphanumeric string with alphabetic initial character)

For example: (R indicates comment, A is Accept Input)

 R:Next line of input replaces current contents of accept buffer
 A:
 R:Next line of input replaces accept buffer, and string variable 'FREE'
 A:$FREE
 R:Next 3 lines of input assigned to string variables 'X', 'Y' and 'Z'
 A:$X,$Y,$Z
 R:Numeric input assigned to numeric variable "Q"
 A:#Q

Platform: Apple II  64Kb RAM.

               OS: DOS          

System Software (SS:) Programming Language (PL:) PILOT

Version: 1980

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