What you should do is something like: DEF COLORING VAR DRAW$="■▦ etc." RESTORE @DRAW WHILE 1 READ TEMP IF TEMP==-1 THEN BREAK PRINT DRAW$[TEMP] WEND @DRAW DATA 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0,0,0,0,1 DATA 5,4,3,2,1,3,3,2,3,-1 END Also: DIM and VAR are identical, but usually people use DIM for arrays and VAR for other variables.