Building a Basic Interpreter, '80s Style, Part 2 (opens in new tab)

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69 pointsnew_here5y ago17 comments

17 comments

10 comments · 2 top-level

tjalfi5y ago· 6 in thread

Here are some other interpreters if you’re curious how this design compares.

Microsoft 8080 BASIC interpreter [0] is a commented disassembly. An improved version is at [1]. The book Programmers at Work also has notes on the design.

[2] is a z80 BBC BASIC interpreter.

[0] http://altairbasic.org/

[1] https://github.com/option8/Altair-BASIC

[2] https://github.com/jblang/bbcbasic-z80

photokandy5y ago

Nice! (OP here)

I've definitely been looking a some implementations, but I don't think I directly looked at these. (Instead, pagetable.com and gw-basic and the like have proven invaluable as well.) I should write a quick post summarizing all the resources that I've been using -- that might prove useful.

wolco5y ago

Any suggestions for CBM BASIC?

rsecora5y ago

Commodore licensed BASIC from Microsoft in 1977.

You have the original ASM disassembled, ROM, kernal and comments at https://www.pagetable.com/c64ref/c64disasm/

3 more replies

MrYellowP5y ago

Here: https://github.com/mist64/cbmbasic

Or, although not what you asked: https://github.com/microsoft/GW-BASIC

ChickeNES5y ago

https://www.pagetable.com/?p=793

https://www.pagetable.com/c64ref/c64disasm/

exlurker5y ago

https://github.com/mist64/cbmbasic Basic V2 as a scripting language

martincmartin5y ago· 2 in thread

Can we fix the capitalization in the title? It's the programming language BASIC, which stands for Beginners All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code

jecel5y ago

For the past few decades it has been common practice to treat language names as normal words independent of their origin. So FORTRAN, LISP, SNOBOL and BASIC have become Fortran, Lisp, Snobol and Basic. Unless the name doesn't look like a word, as in APL or PL/I.

I am just guessing here, but in the really old days many computers only had capital letters and languages with names that were words ended up spelled as FORTH and PASCAL when they shouldn't have been. When lower case characters became common this was corrected and it could be that the acronym based language names came along for the ride.

The only language name that really matters is Smalltalk. The name is actually used in expressions so if someone spells it as SmallTalk their program won't work.

new_hereOP5y ago

Sorry. HN makes some automatic adjustments to headlines when submitting and I didn’t notice it was decapitalized until I’d lost the ability to edit.

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