Ok, all bets are off.
Just made some changes to an old program and found that in fact using a decimal and representing it with the # symbol DOES work. Actually I'm using the variable to provide an offset. Goes something like this.
#1=-.03
g0 x[2.0+#1] y1.5
I had to change the [ from ( .
Using ( seems to not work and may have been causing the error.
Anyway, this"[" does work and so does using # to represent a decimal.
Thanks all for your replies and help.
I'm off to make some more chips. And, convert some more old programs.
LEW