SuperBASIC

This article is about the interpreter included in Sinclair QDOS. For the unrelated BASIC system by Tymshare, see Tymshare SuperBasic.

SuperBASIC is an advanced variant of the BASIC programming language with many structured programming additions. It was developed at Sinclair Research by Jan Jones during the early 1980s. Originally SuperBASIC was intended for a home computer, code-named SuperSpectrum, then under development. This project was later cancelled, however, SuperBASIC was subsequently included in the ROM firmware of the Sinclair QL microcomputer (announced in January 1984), also serving as the command line interpreter for the QL's Qdos operating system. It is notable for being the first second-generation BASIC to be integrated into a microcomputer's operating system, so making the latter user-extendable.

Advanced Features

The example below illustrates the last eight of these features. After entering the statements, entering

      RUN : PRINT weekdays$(Iso("19631122",1))

will print FRI to the screen. Until cleared, the function Iso[1] will act like an extension to the operating system. Similarly, according to the QL User Guide, "many of the operating system commands are themselves defined as procedures."[2]

Example 

AUTO 11,2

  DEFine FN Iso(S,O)
  LOCal y%,m%,d%,i$,n%,w%

  REM Step 0 - to isolate components of a date Stamp "YEARMoDa"
  LET y%=S(1TO 4) : m%=S(5TO 6) : d%=S(7TO 8)

  REM Step 1 - to apply Lachman's Method of Congruence[3]
  LET i$=m%*2.56+ 193 : S=S(1TO 6)- 3

  REM Step 2 - to compute the day-number within the week
  LET w%=(S(1TO 2)&"32"DIV 16+ S(1TO 4)DIV 4+ y%+ i$(2TO 3)+ d%)MOD 7
 
  REM Step 3 - to return result
         SELect ON O
                ON O= 5 : n%=i$(2TO 3)
                ON O= 4 : n%=y%
                ON O= 3 : n%=m%
                ON O= 2 : n%=d%
                ON O= 1 : n%=w%
                ON O= REMAINDER : n%=-1
         END SELect
  RETurn n%

  REMark data statements
  DIM weekdays$(6,3)
  RESTORE 190
  FOR count=0 TO 6 : READ weekdays$(count)

ctrl+space

 100 DIM month$(12,9)
 110 RESTORE 
 120 REMark QL User Guide's "Data Read Restore" example ii
 130 REMark (appropriately amended relative to example i)
 140 FOR count=1 TO 12 : READ month$(count) 
 150 DATA "January", "February", "March"
 160 DATA "April","May","June"
 170 DATA "July","August","September"
 180 DATA "October","November","December"
 190 DATA "SUN","MON","TUE","WED","THU","FRI","SAT"
 199 END DEFine Iso

Bibliography[4]

References

  1. ↑ gopher://sdf.org/0/users/retroburrowers/TemporalRetrology/QL/JG
  2. ↑ Sinclair Research Ltd. QL User Guide 2nd Ed. Cambridge: (1984). Keywords, "DEFine PROCedure"
  3. ↑ Motorola 68000#Example code
  4. ↑ "Illustrating Superbasic on the Sinclair QL - World of Spectrum". www.worldofspectrum.org. Retrieved 2016-04-11.
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 5/9/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.