[Info-vax] BASIC (was Re: 64-bit)

[Dave Froble]

On 1/12/2024 3:09 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 1/12/2024 12:26 PM, Dan Cross wrote:
>> In article <unqjcn$3c1o2$1 at dont-email.me>,
>> Dave Froble  <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>>> On 1/11/2024 2:42 PM, Dan Cross wrote:
>>>> In article <unpa1b$3316l$2 at dont-email.me>,
>>>> Dave Froble  <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>>>>> On 1/10/2024 9:28 PM, bill wrote:
>>>>>> On 1/10/2024 7:02 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>>>>>> The world has evolved.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Exactly.  BASIC also evolved, but better languages have passed it by.
>>>>>
>>>>> I confess to curiosity.  In what ways has other languages passed by Basic?
>
>>>> String handling
>>>> seems anemic.
>>>
>>> Can't let that one go.  Basic in my opinion does strings very well.
>>
>> What do you like about it?
>>
>> Consider writing a lexical analyzer for a simple expression
>> language; what would such a thing look like, in BASIC?  Here I
>> want to take a string as input, and emit a list of tokens that
>> correspond to the elements of the langauge that are represented
>> in that string.
>
> Basic has the fundamental string concept right with dynamic strings.
>
> Maybe it miss a few string functions. Including something for regex.
>
> But it is not that different from Java, C#, Python, whatever.
>
>>>> There doesn't seem to be support for generalized
>>>> memory pointers,
>>>
>>> Correct, Basic does not have any pointer data types.  It does have a function to
>>> retrieve the value of a pointer.
>>
>> That makes it challenging to implement dynamically sized data
>> structures like trees or graphs where the size is not already
>> known, or hash tables that use chaining for collision resolution
>> etc.
>>
>> How would I do these things in VSI BASIC?
>
> Basic operates on arrays via array indexes (like Fortran and Cobol).
>
> And arrays can be resized.
>
> I posted a tree example here 2 years ago.
>
> Pretty? No. Pretty awful looking.
>
> But what does that mean?
>
> It means that Basic is a poor language for teaching fundamental
> data structures.

My introduction to data structures was in Fortran.  I guarantee you that doing 
so in Basic is much better.

> It means that Basic should not be used for all libraries used
> by Basic.

Most of my library routines are written in Basic.  A few are Macro-32.

> It does not mean much for writing business applications. Creating
> such data structures are not part of writing business applications.

You might be surprised ...


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David Froble                       Tel: 724-529-0450
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