Article View: alt.folklore.computers
Article #623765Re: The birth of BASIC
From: Andrew Swallow
Date: Sun, 03 Jun 2018 13:57
Date: Sun, 03 Jun 2018 13:57
47 lines
4327 bytes
4327 bytes
On 02/06/2018 22:19, Peter Flass wrote: > Gareth's Downstairs Computer > <headstone255.but.n...@yahoo.com> wrote: >> 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. >> >> > > A1 stores input one character per word, so you lose somewhere between 75% > and 84% of your memory, in return for having something that is a bit easier > to handle. Otherwise you have to shift and mask to manipulate characters. > Also Fortran did not support shifting and masking. The programmer would have to use division.
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X-Received: by 2002:a1c:f108:: with SMTP id p8-v6mr1095001wmh.0.1528034275456; Sun, 03 Jun 2018 06:57:55 -0700 (PDT) X-BeenThere: alt.folklore.computers@googlegroups.com Received: by 2002:a1c:ca07:: with SMTP id a7-v6ls2360162wmg.9.gmail; Sun, 03 Jun 2018 06:57:54 -0700 (PDT) X-Received: by 2002:a1c:7e41:: with SMTP id z62-v6mr1389737wmc.29.1528034274624; Sun, 03 Jun 2018 06:57:54 -0700 (PDT) Path: mbox-mo1.pugleaf.net!d26-v6ni18213wmb.0!nntp.google.com!feeder1-2.proxad.net!proxad.net!feeder1-1.proxad.net!ecngs!feeder.ecngs.de!border1.nntp.ams1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!buffer1.nntp.ams1.giganews.com!buffer2.nntp.ams1.giganews.com!news.giganews.com.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 03 Jun 2018 08:57:54 -0500 Subject: Re: The birth of BASIC Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers 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$1@dont-email.me> <WtOdnY9WrctpSI_GnZ2dnUU78dXNnZ2d@giganews.com> <peup83$pik$1@dont-email.me> <1047735211.549666848.482681.peter_flass-yahoo.com@news.eternal-september.org> From: Andrew Swallow <am.sw...@btinternet.com> Date: Sun, 3 Jun 2018 14:57:55 +0100 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/52.8.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <1047735211.549666848.482681.peter_flass-yahoo.com@news.eternal-september.org> Message-ID: <bYGdnR_1oJN_bo7GnZ2dnUU78S-dnZ2d@giganews.com> Lines: 47 X-Usenet-Provider: http://www.giganews.com X-Trace: sv3-aOSQ2CWbCcZSi9OE7JzHswGoV2+XCY3jY245E/rtY562amATQAYWEyAaqakvDTuGmlQ/5iG9VZ4ULmb!oAUFl2D8p+t395VtnyVW8VsvKobJDQEgxwjlpv3pfpUpwBeN+AiRjm3RnvKllhwoF5mqbhBeow4= X-Complaints-To: ab...@giganews.com X-DMCA-Notifications: http://www.giganews.com/info/dmca.html X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.40 Bytes: 3851 X-Original-Bytes: 3758 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit