Interpreted BASIC?

Is there a very simple interpreter for BASIC for BASH?

Thanx!

FW

It would appear that that are three: bwbasic, sdlbasic and yabasic

sdlbasic says its for game development using the SDL library. The SDL library manages video, audio, input devices, CD-ROM, threads, shared object loading, networking and timers.

bwbasic looks like a more complete ANSI Standard BASIC interpreter than yabasic and could be the only one to have a built-in editor.

All are supported on other operating systems as well as Linux.

FYI I used the command line:

sudo apt search "basic interpreter" | less

to find these Raspbian packages. Use "sudo apt install packagename" to install one or more of them. I have no idea which is the best: I haven't written BASIC since around 1985.

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Martin    | martin at 
Gregorie  | gregorie dot org

Won't you only find packages that have the exact description "basic interpreter" that way, or is the search cleverer than that?

Two Raspberry Pi related options:

- Gordon's RTB seems to have vanished from the repos but can be downloaded here:

I just tried it and it still works, and it does GPIO, but unfortunately for OP it requires a graphical screen. (And to install libsdl-sound1.2 first, even if you don't use sound.)

- Also graphical, harking back to the inspiration for the Raspberry Pi:

The only interpreter that I saw (in a web search) that does support command line/batch mode is apparently bwbasic, which is in the standard repo like you found.

Its cleverer than that: it matches packages using a regex. Changing the regex to "basic.*interpreter" added one other relevant hit: 'brandy', a BBC BASIC V interpreter

Be aware that 'apt search' is looking at the package's description, not its name, so a fairly generic regex like the one I used is likely to include irrelevant packages in its hits list. Since it only displays the first sentence in each description, its not always obvious why a particular hit got into the list.

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Martin    | martin at 
Gregorie  | gregorie dot org

Following is not really the answer to the OP, but I grew up with this thing, and think the javascript emulation is cool.

enter the following at the prompt (on a PC keyboard for * use the @ character, next to the return/enter key)

*EXEC !BOOT

and you will be starting the game, Elite ...

The site

may interest some with memories of long ago, the beginning of my interest in home computing.

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Adrian C

will show you. There is also opencomal which is a basic like language with more structure.

If you are looking for an interactive interpreter as an alternative to a bash shell, and I would recommend iPython rather than a BASIC variant. Python is far more powerful language with a vast range of library modules, and iPython allows you to use all of that interactively.

---druck

Thank you! Vintage-Basic is excellent!

FW

I'd suggest PowerShell ...

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Adrian C

On the Raspberry Pi?! Because we're in comp.sys.raspberry-pi here.

Yup.

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Adrian C

... or you could run RiscOS and you'd have BBC BASIC built in - an *extremely* powerful (and quick) version.

Mind you this all depends on what other connectivity you need.

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W J G

On Thu, 25 Mar 2021 12:34:50 +0100, "A. Dumas" declaimed the following:

MicroSloth made it somewhat open-source and have ports for four architectures/OS... Using the port of .NET runtime...

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	Wulfraed                 Dennis Lee Bieber         AF6VN 
	wlfraed@ix.netcom.com    http://wlfraed.microdiversity.freeddns.org/

It should work on the console without any GUI running.

Try running it with the -D flag:

rtb -D

then looking at the list of modes it prints, then you can pick the mode/resolution with

rtb -m X

where X is the mode number listed from the -D command. Mode 0 is usually the highest resolution one which is the default if you don't use the

-m flag.

RTB (and wiringPi) are sort of on holiday right now - I've had some health issues in the past year or 2 and am now in the middle of moving house, so once the dust has settled I'll be doing more with them.

Gordon

Right! Thanks. I looked at the documentation and did try the -D flag but I was another step removed, over ssh, and it just would not start. I have not tried forwarding the X-server, that seemed a little over the top for OP who intended it as a bash tool.

All the best!

I know... but........ that seems great if you do things with PowerShell on Windows, not so much as a deliberate/independent choice on the Pi.

Why would you fart about with that rather than using one of the standard shells such as zsh? Not that I'd ever dream of writing a script with a shell scripting language.

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Tim

Why?

The more sophisticated Windows users think PowerShell is wonderful because it give them access to a lot of stuff the GUI doesn't touch, including a lot of things that *should* be in management GUIs e.g. finding mailbox sizes in the last version of Exchange that I had dealings with. That shouldn't be a command-line-only job, given what else the GUI does cover.

But it's *Windows* stuff. *nix has always had a shell (indeed many) to reach the command-line APIs of various daemons and applications. This chap wants to get back to BASICs. Why, we don't know. I occasionally dabble with VBA in Access, and even more occasionally in Excel, but I have no other use for any form of BASIC.

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Joe

If you use ssh -X then it should also work, but it'll be slow. Running it over VNC also works.

Gordon