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Article #623763Re: The birth of BASIC
From: Gareths Downstairs Computer
Date: Sat, 02 Jun 2018 18:55
Date: Sat, 02 Jun 2018 18:55
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3390 bytes
On 02/06/2018 18:37, Andrew Swallow wrote: > 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. I know not what is A1 format, but awareness of such a problem makes it seem to be a simple matter to adjust values or else to translate to an internal format.
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