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TRS-80 Level I BASIC
Level I BASIC is a dialect of the BASIC programming language that shipped with the first TRS-80, the TRS-80 Model I. Background Tandy employee Steve Leininger had written the first draft of the NIBL (National Industrial Basic Language) BASIC interpreter for the SC/MP while employed at National Semiconductor . Unable to take that source code with him, he initially hired a consultant to write an interpreter. When that contractor failed to deliver, he adapted Li-Chen Wang's public domain version of Tiny BASIC for the original prototype of the TRS-80 Model I. This required only 2 KB of memory for the interpreter, leaving an average of another 2 KB free for user programs in common 4 KB memory layouts of early machines. During a demonstration to executives, Tandy Corporation's then-President Charles Tandy tried to enter his salary but was unable to do so. This was because Tiny BASIC used 2-byte signed integers with a maximum value of 32,767. The result was a request f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tiny BASIC
Tiny BASIC is a family of dialects of the BASIC programming language that can fit into 4 or fewer KBs of memory. Tiny BASIC was designed by Dennis Allison and the People's Computer Company (PCC) in response to the open letter published by Bill Gates complaining about users pirating Altair BASIC, which sold for $150. Tiny BASIC was intended to be a completely free version of BASIC that would run on the same early microcomputers. Tiny BASIC was released as a specification, not an implementation, published in the September 1975 issue of the PCC newsletter. The article invited programmers to implement it on their machines and send the resulting assembler language implementation back for inclusion in a series of three planned newsletters. Li-Chen Wang, author of Palo Alto Tiny BASIC, coined the term "copyleft" to describe this concept. The community response was so overwhelming that the newsletter was relaunched as '' Dr. Dobb's Journal'', the first regular periodical to focus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
String Handling
In computer programming, a string is traditionally a sequence of characters, either as a literal constant or as some kind of variable. The latter may allow its elements to be mutated and the length changed, or it may be fixed (after creation). A string is often implemented as an array data structure of bytes (or words) that stores a sequence of elements, typically characters, using some character encoding. More general, ''string'' may also denote a sequence (or list) of data other than just characters. Depending on the programming language and precise data type used, a variable declared to be a string may either cause storage in memory to be statically allocated for a predetermined maximum length or employ dynamic allocation to allow it to hold a variable number of elements. When a string appears literally in source code, it is known as a string literal or an anonymous string. In formal languages, which are used in mathematical logic and theoretical computer science, a string ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
