QuickBasic compiler clone

0. Contents

This is the documentation of qbc-0.1.1.1.

   1. Purpose
   2. Goals
      2.1. Features not omitted
      2.2. Features supported if possible

      2.3. Features not considered to be supported
      2.4. Extra features
   3. Copying
   4. Requirements
   5. Downloading

1. Purpose

Tokenizes and parses QuickBasic code. This is under development.

Latest snapshots of the lexer and parser are available:
qb.l // 2002-04-08 (3 kB)
qb.y // 2002-04-08 (8 kB)

If you are interested in joining the development, please contact me.

2. Goals

To provide tools for running QuickBASIC programs in Linux and other non-MS-DOS -environments.

2.1. Features not omitted

These features are often missing from other BASIC implementations, because they are difficult to implement or not seemed as important.

ON n GOTO/GOSUB
READ/DATA/RESTORE


 Fully compatible INKEY$
 TIMER function
 Type compatibility (INTEGER must still be 16-bit signed integer etc)
 PLAY/ON PLAY

 DEF FN
 Number printing and stringifying (PRINT, STR$) compatibility
 OPEN: Both syntaxes
 NEXT with comma separated list of variables
 IF: Both syntaxes plus implicit GOTO in THEN and ELSE support.
 PRINT abbreviated as ? support

`2.2. Features supported if possible`



Some of these features require emulation of
PC-style hardware without direct hardware access.


 DEF SEG &HB800/PEEK/POKE support for direct video access in text mode
 IN/OUT support to ports &H388 - &H389 for AdLib support
 SCREEN 12/13, PSET and other drawing stuff

`2.3. Features not considered to be supported`



These QuickBASIC features are not seen as important, and
will not be supported (unless somebody has too much time).


 All the excessive ERR codes like "Syntax error" etc
 KEY ON/KEY OFF  (dunno about ON KEY)
 FIELD and other obscure file features (some of which were new in QB 7.0)

`2.4. Extra features`



There are no plans for extra features yet, but internationalizations
like UTF-8 support would be nice.

`3. Copying`



qbc has been written by Joel Yliluoma, a.k.a.
Bisqwit,

and is distributed under the terms of the
General Public License (GPL).

`4. Requirements`



At least these GNU tools are required: flex, bison, gcc, make.

`5. Downloading`

The official home page of qbc is at http://oktober.stc.cx/source/qbc.html .
Check there for new versions.

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