[Info-vax] Programming languages on VMS

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 1/24/2018 1:59 PM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> On 01/24/2018 01:21 PM, Craig A. Berry wrote:
>> On Wednesday, January 24, 2018 at 11:26:04 AM UTC-6, Bill Gunshannon 
>> wrote:
>>> What data type of none-integer does
>>> BASIC support that can do calculations with decimals without the
>>> cumulative error common to floating point?
>>
>> Just a wild guess, but maybe the DECIMAL data type?
>>
>> $ help/library=basichelp data_types decimal
>>
>>
>> DATA_TYPES
>>
>>    DECIMAL
>>
>>       The DECIMAL(d,s) data type keyword specifies  packed  decimal  
>> data.   A
>>       packed  decimal  value  has  a  specified  number  of  digits  
>> (d) and a
>>       specified decimal point position (s).

> Thank you.  I suspected there was such in DEC BASIC.
> Thus leading to my next question.
> 
> Is it part of the ANSI Standard? How many versions of BASIC have
> it?  It is always a bad idea to bet on non-standard features in
> any language.

Fair point.

Basic beyond trivial code is not particular portable.

VMS Basic, VB/VBS/VB and VB.NET are rather different languages.

Arne