XBasic is a variant of the

BASIC programming language BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of General-purpose programming language, general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. Dartmouth BASIC, The original version was created by John ...

that was developed in the late 1980s for the Motorola 88000 CPU and

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...

by Max Reason. In the early 1990s it was ported to

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

and

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

, and since 1999 it has been available as open source software with its runtime library under the

LGPL The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) is a free-software license published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The license allows developers and companies to use and integrate a software component released under the LGPL into their own ...

license. It should not be confused with

TI Extended BASIC TI BASIC is an ANSI-compliant BASIC programming language interpreter built into the 1979 Texas Instruments TI-99/4 home computer and its improved 1981 version, the TI-99/4A. In contrast to most BASICs found on contemporary microcomputers, TI ...

, which is sometimes called XBasic or X Basic. It should also not be confused with the proprietary Xbasic language used in Alpha Software's Alpha Anywhere and Alpha Five products. Version 6.2.3 was the last official release, released on 27 October 2002, however unofficial releases are still being maintained by a group of enthusiasts on GitHub.

Characteristics

XBasic has signed and unsigned 8-, 16- and 32-bit and signed 64-bit

integer An integer is the number zero (), a positive natural number (, , , etc.) or a negative integer with a minus sign (−1, −2, −3, etc.). The negative numbers are the additive inverses of the corresponding positive numbers. In the language ...

s as well as 32- and 64-bit

floating point In computing, floating-point arithmetic (FP) is arithmetic that represents real numbers approximately, using an integer with a fixed precision, called the significand, scaled by an integer exponent of a fixed base. For example, 12.345 can be ...

values. The string data type is only for 8-bit characters. It is possible to generate an

assembly language In computer programming, assembly language (or assembler language, or symbolic machine code), often referred to simply as Assembly and commonly abbreviated as ASM or asm, is any low-level programming language with a very strong correspondence be ...

file. XBasic has a Windows only version called

XBLite XBLite is a free Open Source BASIC programming language compiler and development system. It was started in 2001 by David Szafranski in order to provide a Windows exclusive version of the XBasic dialect. XBLite is released under the GNU GPL licen ...

. Development is at

SourceForge SourceForge is a web service that offers software consumers a centralized online location to control and manage open-source software projects and research business software. It provides source code repository hosting, bug tracking, mirrorin ...

Components

* Editor (writing source code) * Compiler (creating machine code) * Debugger (checking for errors) * Libraries (ready made code to call on) * GuiDesigner (creates the graphical user interface for the program)

Example code

' Programs contain: ' 1. A PROLOG with type/function/constant declarations. ' 2. This Entry() function where execution begins. ' 3. Zero or more additional functions. ' FUNCTION Entry() PRINT "Hello World" PRINT 2+2 PRINT 44/12 PRINT 33*3 END FUNCTION

References

External links

*https://groups.io/g/MaxReasonsxBasic * *
documentation, links and resourcesXBLite homepageXBasic
Tasks implemented in XBasic o
rosettacode.org
{{Use dmy dates, date=March 2017 Articles with example BASIC code BASIC compilers Linux programming tools Programming tools for Windows BASIC programming language family