Just BASIC
| Appeared in | 2004 |
|---|---|
| Designed by | Carl Gundel |
| Developer | Shoptalk Systems |
| Stable release | 1.01 (July 24, 2005) |
| Influenced by | Liberty BASIC |
| OS | Windows |
| Website | www.justbasic.com |
Just BASIC is a dialect of the highly popular programming language BASIC of the 1970s, for 32-bit computer systems using Windows. It's the freeware version of Liberty BASIC, popular since 1992. Just BASIC development began in 2001; first public release was in 2004. It allows creating programs with a comprehensive tutorial, help files and a message board.
Contents |
[edit] Syntax
As the name suggests, and most BASIC dialects are, the syntax is very simple and easy-to-learn. This makes it very effective in creating programs and even games. Below is a list of some simple commands:
- print - outputs text to the screen, as in:
print "Hello, world!" - goto - tells the computer to jump to another point in the computer program, specified by a label, as in:
goto [start]orgoto 10 - let - allows making one variable equal to another or do mathematics calculations, normally used to make code easier to read (as in the if/then example below). Note: It is not required to use the 'let' command before changing a variable:
let h$ = "hello"is the same ash$ = "hello" - input - allows defining a variable, as in:
input "What is your name?"; name$ - if/then - allows making the program check a variable, and take certain actions depending on its value (or content if it's a string), as in:
if n < 1 then let n = 1
Like most BASIC languages, Just BASIC uses the standard
if(example=example)
'do something
end if
syntax, instead of the more Java-like { and }. Also note the use of only one equals sign, in contrast with the C-style "==" equality operator in many languages.
[edit] Hello, world!
The minimal code required for the "Hello, world!" program in Just BASIC is:
Print "Hello, world!"
end
[edit] Graphical user interfaces
Just BASIC also allows building graphical user interfaces (GUIs). It also comes with Freeform-J a WYSIWYG editor for just this purpose. FreeForm-J is the sister of Liberty BASIC's original FreeForm, which is now a community open source project.
[edit] Interpreting
Just BASIC automatically interprets the active program on running. To distribute a program, the source code of a program must be tokenized. The source code is shorthanded and separately encoded depending on its various functions and features. The tokenized file is executed by the included runtime engine, named jbrun101.exe in the v1.01 release. The runtime engine reads this file and executes the commands as if a user was entering them.
