# Save Basic Program as ASCII **URL:** \ **Category:** Programming\ **Created:** [September 16, 2026, 6:39am UTC](https://forum.cpcwiki.eu/t/basic-programm-als-ascii-speichern/434 "2026-09-16T06:39:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![harzretro](https://forum.cpcwiki.eu/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/73ab20/32.png) [@harzretro](https://forum.cpcwiki.eu/u/harzretro)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2026, 6:39am UTC](https://forum.cpcwiki.eu/t/basic-programm-als-ascii-speichern/434/1 "2026-09-16T06:39:02Z")
When I save a BASIC program as ASCII (using `,a`) and open it in a text editor, it works almost as expected. However, at the end of the program, there are some special characters, followed by a custom key definition and a few code snippets. Is this normal? What kind of data is this? ---
**Author:** ![Arnoldemu](https://forum.cpcwiki.eu/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/9f8e36/32.png) [@Arnoldemu](https://forum.cpcwiki.eu/u/Arnoldemu)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2026, 4:57pm UTC](https://forum.cpcwiki.eu/t/basic-programm-als-ascii-speichern/434/2 "2026-09-16T16:57:56Z")
Welcome. It is seen often. When a file is saved with “,a” the filesystem doesn’t add a header. If you then use a program to extract it from a DSK it will use the length in the header if found and if not it may use the number of blocks used by the file to determine the length and the last block may contain additional garbage. The file will often have a ‘end of file’ marker in the text (I think it is hex 0f) and you can cut it back to that. ---
**Author:** ![harzretro](https://forum.cpcwiki.eu/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/73ab20/32.png) [@harzretro](https://forum.cpcwiki.eu/u/harzretro)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2026, 6:31am UTC](https://forum.cpcwiki.eu/t/basic-programm-als-ascii-speichern/434/3 "2026-09-17T06:31:43Z")
Thanks a lot 🙂 I just found it intriguing …