FreeBASIC: Difference between revisions
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Revision as of 22:29, 12 August 2009
| The FreeBASIC Logo | |
| Paradigm | Procedural / Object Oriented |
|---|---|
| Designed by | Andre Victor |
| Developer | The FreeBASIC Development Team |
| First appeared | 2004 |
| Stable release | 0.20.0 Beta
/ August 10, 2008 |
| Typing discipline | Static |
| OS | DOS, Linux, Microsoft Windows |
| License | GNU GPL, Standard libraries licensed under the GNU LGPL |
| Website | http://www.freebasic.net |
| Influenced by | |
| QuickBASIC, C | |
FreeBASIC is a free/open source (GPL), 32-bit BASIC compiler[1] for Microsoft Windows, protected-mode DOS (DOS extender), Linux, and Xbox.
FreeBASIC allows a high level of support for programs written for QBasic, by using the "QB" dialect. Many programs written for QBasic will compile and run in this mode without any changes needed. However, most substantial programs will need changes to be made before they can be compiled using the default dialect.
Features
FreeBASIC is a self-hosting compiler, being roughly 120,000 lines of code (compiler core only, not including libraries).
It makes use of the GNU binutils programming tools as backends and can produce console and graphical/GUI executables, besides dynamic and static libraries. FreeBASIC fully supports the use of C libraries and partial C++ library support. This lets programmers use and create libraries for C and many other languages.
FreeBASIC has been rated close in speed with mainstream tools, such as GCC[2].
Syntax
FreeBASIC syntax attempts to stay as close to the BASIC syntax as possible, specifically that of QuickBASIC. Although the syntax attempts to stay compatible with its predecessor, FreeBASIC follows modern standards and coding practices. Standard procedural features, along with object oriented features such as types as objects, operator overloading, function overloading, namespaces, etc., have been added in FreeBASIC.
FreeBASIC's lines end when the end-of-line characters are found, or with a colon. Because of this, lines don't have to have a special character (such as the semicolon in C) to notify the compiler of the end of line. Multiple statements may be written on one line by separating each statement with a colon :.
FreeBASIC supports block commenting along with end of line remarks. Full line comments are made with an apostrophe ', while blocks of commented code begin with /' and end with '/.
Compatibility
FreeBASIC is a successor to the QuickBASIC programming language.[1] Changes were made during development to keep FreeBASIC compatible with modern utilities, and facilitate advanced programming features. In order to keep the compiler moving forward, GCC compliant, and to also retain the ability to use a QuickBASIC compatible language, the -lang option set was created.
- When choosing Language Set FB (-lang fb as a command-line argument), all of the new features that FreeBASIC offers are available, and the "hackish" features from QuickBASIC (that were incompatible with modern programming practices) are disallowed.
- Language Set FB-Lite (-lang fblite) provides access to most of the new, non-object-oriented features of FreeBASIC, but allows a coding style similar to that of older versions of BASIC. Syntax rules, such as allowing implicit variables, suffixes, GOSUB / RETURN, numeric labels, etc., are permitted in this lang option.
- Language Set QB (-lang qb) is similar to -lang fblite, but is more focused on specifically replicating QBASIC-like behavior. -lang qb is designed to make it easier to run programs originally written for QBASIC, and is useful in cases where -lang fblite is not compatible enough.
Example Code
As in QBasic, a program to write a line of text to the screen can be done with a simple statement:
print "Hello, World!"
Graphics library
FreeBASIC has a built-in 2D, software graphics library to be QuickBASIC compatible, which provides the user with simple graphics primitives (such as rectangles, lines, and circles), blitting, and additional features which weren't present in QuickBASIC's graphical library. The library itself is not OS dependent, so code is portable across platforms with the library.
Although the library is built-in, it is only included if one chooses to use it, which is done simply by including a call to the FBgfx Screen command. Common libraries such as OpenGL + Creating a Window with your API (Windows, Linux, Etc.) for hardware acceleration can be used without interfering with the FreeBASIC graphics library.
Future development
FreeBASIC continues to make development progress toward its goal of being a GCC front-end[3], which would allow many features found in C++ and other object-oriented programming languages, portability to nearly any modern system, and advanced optimization techniques.
With the release of version 0.17 object oriented programming (OOP) was introduced adding classes, extending the basic type. Further implementations are expected.
During the 2007 Sourceforge awards, FreeBASIC reached the shortlist of nominees for best user support. [4]
References
- ^ a b Lee Seats. "FreeBASIC the Successor to QuickBASIC". About.com. Retrieved 2008-08-17.
- ^ "The Computer Language Benchamarks Game FreeBASIC vs.gcc". Retrieved 2008-04-28.
- ^ "FreeBASIC Todo List on Sourceforge". Retrieved 2007-07-31.
- ^ "SourceForge.net: 2007 Community Choice Awards". Retrieved 2008-12-31.
