Re: Interpreter for old basic programs from the line number era

On Mon, 3 Mar 2008, thomas.mertes@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I wrote a basic interpreter (bas7) which can execute old basic
> programs from the line number era (If you know GW-Basic, that
> was the era). The interpreter is released under the GPL.
> A description of bas7 can be found here:
>
> http://seed7.sourceforge.net/scrshots/bas7.htm
>
> It would be nice to get some feedback about it.

I don't claim to be an expert on old BASICs, but I did look at the
webpage, and it seems that only a subset of GW-BASIC is implemented.
There are a lot of old perfectly good GW-BASIC programs that would not
run under bas7.  Also, the web page stated that "spaghetti code is very
common in BASIC."  Although it is true that a quarter of a century ago
there were programmers who, through lack of understanding, training,
and discipline, wrote spaghetti code, with more modern BASICs (even as
old as Microsoft's QuickBasic and QBasic, which have been out a number
of years, this is not necessarily so.  I have written (as have many
people) QuickBasic programs that print out at many pages with nary a
GOTO in them.  Fully structured.  Even GW-BASIC could be written well
with some discipline.

-- 
Paul Bartlett