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I remember having integer variables in Amstrad CPC (Locomotive) Basic. Something with the % symbol. edit: ChatGPT says that BBC BASIC and TRS-80 Microsoft BASIC also supported integer variables with % declaration.

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The wikipedia page for Microsoft BASIC (which Applesoft Basic is a variant), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_BASIC, mentions that integer variables were stored as 2 bytes (signed 16-bit) but all calculations were still done in floating point (plus you needed to store the % character to denote an integer var).

So the main benefit was for saving space with an array of integers.

Yes, Locomotive BASIC also supported DEFINT command, so, all variables in a given range would be treated as integers without "%" suffix.

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