ASIC programming language

ASIC is a compiler and integrated development environment for a subset of the BASIC programming language. It was released for MS-DOS and compatible systems as shareware. Written by Dave Visti of 80/20 Software, it was one of the few BASIC compilers legally available for download from BBSes. ASIC allows compiling to an EXE or COM file. A COM file for Hello world program is 360 bytes.

ASIC has little or no support for logical operators, control structures, and floating-point arithmetic. These shortcomings resulted in the tongue-in-cheek motto, "ASIC: It's almost BASIC!"ASIC is the work of David Visti and his compiler takes code that is "almost BASIC" and compiles it down to a very small executable.
, Programmer's Corner: TIPI: A Small Programming Language for Small Comp, By Kent PetersonASIC
Area code magic with AC Hunter (computer program) (On Disk) (evaluation), by George Campbell, COMPUTE! ISSUE 126 / FEBRUARY 1991 / PAGE 86

Features

ASIC is strongly impoverished in comparison with its contemporary BASICs. The features of ASIC are selected to make a program be easily and directly compiled into machine language. Thus, many language constructs of ASIC are equivalent to constructs of assembly language.

Expressions

ASIC does not have the exponentiation operator ^.

ASIC does not have boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT etc.).

Input and Output

PRINT's arguments must be a literal or variable. PRINT does not allow to use combined expressions as its arguments, nor does it allow to use strings concatenated with ; or +.

If a PRINT command ends with ; or ,, then the next PRINT command will resume in the position where this one left off, just as though its argument were appended to the argument of the current PRINT command.

; LOCATE row, column : Moves the text cursor to the position (column, row), where 0 ≤ column and 0 ≤ row. The position (0, 0) is the upper left corner.

Graphics

; PSET (row,column),color : Turns on the pixel of the color color at position (column, row), where 0 ≤column and 0 ≤ row. The position (0, 0) is the upper left corner.

Control Structures

Decisions

A boolean condition in IF may be only a comparison of numbers or strings, but not a comparison of combined expressions.

After THEN, there may be a sequence of statements delimited by ELSE or ENDIF. An example:

IF X < 0 THEN
PRINT "Negative"
ELSE
PRINT "Non-negative"
ENDIF

Contrary to other BASICs, statements cannot be put between THEN and the end of the line.

An if-statement can realize the conditional jump. In this case, after THEN there may be a label.

Looping

In FOR, after TO there may be only a number - literal or variable - but not a combined expression. The STEP clause does not exist in ASIC.

Branching

In a GOTO statement, the label must be followed by a colon.

Subroutines

In a GOSUB statement, the label must be followed by a colon.

BAS2ASI

This utility, serving to convert GW-BASIC programs to ASIC syntax, in the version 5.0 does not support some GW-BASIC features. Examples:

STEP in the for loop is not converted. The program

10 FOR i=10 TO 1 STEP -1
20 PRINT i
30 NEXT i

is converted into

REM 10 FOR i=10 TO 1 STEP -1
FOR I@ = 10 TO 1
ASIC0@ = -1 -1
I@ = I@ + ASIC0@

REM 20 PRINT i
PRINT I@

REM 30 NEXT i REM 30 NEXT i 3: Syntax error

The exponentiation operator ^ is not converted. The program

10 a=2
20 b=a^10
30 PRINT b

is converted into

REM 10 a=2
L10:
A@ = 2

REM 20 b=a^10
2: Syntax error

REM 30 PRINT b REM 30 PRINT b 3: Syntax error

References

External links

ASIC 5.00 + Libraries + Linker

ASIC
Tasks implemented in ASIC o
rosettacode.org

{{BASIC

BASIC programming language family