Re: The birth of BASIC

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#623762

From: Andrew Swallow
Date: Sat, 02 Jun 2018 17:37

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On 02/06/2018 18:32, Gareth's Downstairs Computer wrote:
> On 02/06/2018 17:26, Andrew Swallow wrote:
>> On 02/06/2018 12:27, Gareth's Downstairs Computer wrote:
>>> On 02/06/2018 06:44, Charles Richmond wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On the DEC-20, BASIC Plus 2 had a lot of enhancements to plain 
>>>> BASIC. I never used it much, but some I knew at university did 
>>>> fairly complex projects using this BASIC.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Yes, but save from some contextual limitations (execution speed,
>>> storage space, etc) to a well designed project, the implementation
>>> language is irrelevant.
>>>
>>>
>> If the computer language cannot handle character you soon hit problems.
> 
> 
> All the languages with which I've been involved from the very lowest
> to PASCAL and FORTRAN, had an inalienable capability to deal with
> all forms of data having binary representations.
> 
> You don't hit a problem if you need a couple of hours' work to turn in
> string handling capabilities; after all, the C language has no string
> handling facilities, and relies on a string library, and, usually, a
> CHAR data type defined in terms of its binary size and signing.
> 

The ICL 1900 read characters into integers in A1 format. IF statements 
compared by subtracting which resulted in overflow.

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Subject: Re: The birth of BASIC
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References: <874lisvjda.fsf@usenet.ankman.de> <fnammmFl3d5U4@mid.individual.net> <pep9gi$ssu$1@dont-email.me> <877enj7cme.fsf@usenet.ankman.de> <wMadnSM0r6R794zGnZ2dnUU78TXNnZ2d@giganews.com> <petaqq$5qm$1@dont-email.me> <petuvh$iln$2@dont-email.me> <-8-dnaPqYe2kWI_GnZ2dnUU78bmdnZ2d@giganews.com> <peukbr$qbf$1@dont-email.me>
From: Andrew Swallow <am.sw...@btinternet.com>
Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2018 18:37:57 +0100
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