my-basic

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简体中文

Introduction
Compatibility
Main features
Script at a glance
Related projects
Installation
Interpreter workflow diagram
Wiki
References
Support MY-BASIC development/List of donors

Introduction

MY-BASIC is a lightweight cross-platform easy extendable BASIC interpreter written in pure C with less than twenty thousand lines of source code. MY-BASIC is a dynamic typed programming language. It supports structured grammar, and implements a style of OOP called prototype-based programming paradigm, furthermore it offers a functional programming ability with lambda abstraction. It is aimed to be either an embeddable scripting language or a standalone interpreter. The core is very lightweight; all in a C source file and an associated header file; simpleness of source file layout and tightness dependency make it extraordinarily tough. Anyone even C programming newbies could learn how to use it and add new scripting interfaces in five minutes. It's able to easily combine MY-BASIC with an existing project in C, C++, Java, Objective-C, Swift, C# and many other languages. Script driven can make your projects more powerful, elegant and neat. It's also able to learn how to build an interpreter from scratch with MY-BASIC, or build your own interpreter easily based on it.

"MY-" in the name could be understood literally as "My" or "Make Your", it's up to you.

Compatibility

It fits well on a large scale of Workstation, PC, Tablet, Pad, Mobile Phone, PDA, Video Game Console, Raspberry Pi, Intel Edison, Arduino and even MCU; totally portable to Windows, macOS, Unix, Linux, iOS, Android, RTOS, etc.

For Arduino

There is a MY-BASIC interpreter porting of Arduino, with a totally rewritten shell and user manual. Please see MY-BASIC ARDU.

Main features

MY-BASIC is a dynamic typed programming language with BASIC syntax and has a very dynamic nature; it makes it flexible and easy to use. MY-BASIC offers a wide range of features including:

It is totally free to use MY-BASIC for commercial or noncommercial purpose under the MIT license
Written in clean ANSI C, source code is portable to a dozen of platforms
Lightweight (within memory usage less than 128KB), fast, and cuttable
With both retro and modern BASIC syntax
Case-insensitive tokenization, and many other indelible BASIC feelings
Unicode support
Prototype-based programming (OOP) paradigm, with reflection support
Lambda abstraction enhanced functional programming
Dynamic typed integer, real, string, boolean, usertype, etc. with array support
Standard numeric functions, and standard string functions
Referenced usertype support
Collection implementation and manipulation functions for LIST and DICT
Automatic releasing of referenced objects (list, dictionary, referenced usertype, prototype, lambda, etc.) benefited from Reference Counting and Garbage Collection
Multiple source file support by IMPORT statement
Structured user customizable sub routine definition by DEF/ENDDEF support, including tail recursion optimization
Structured IF/THEN/ELSEIF/ELSE/ENDIF support
Structured FOR/TO/STEP/NEXT, FOR/IN/NEXT, WHILE/WEND, DO/UNTIL support
Reserved retro GOTO, GOSUB/RETURN support
Debug APIs
Customizable memory pool
High expansibility, easy to use APIs, easy to write customized scripting interfaces
Powerful interactive ability to manipulate script facilities at native side; or to use native functionalities in script, and vice versa
More features under development

You may wondering if it's possible to introduce another feature to MY-BASIC, you may would like to take a look at this page. You may also would like to take a look at the language design to find some of my plan.

Script at a glance

Come along with a traditional "Hello World" script in MY-BASIC:

input "What is your name: ", n$

def foo(a, b)
	return a + " " + b + " by " + n$ + "."
enddef

print foo("Hello", "world");

Read the MY-BASIC Quick Reference (especially the "Programming with BASIC" section) to get more details about how to program in MY-BASIC.

I've been making some other projects, which make use of MY-BASIC, and make more benefits.

MY-BASIC Code Editor (Unity)
- A code editor for MY-BASIC powered by the Unity3D engine.

Installation

Use standalone interpreter binary

This repository contains precompiled binaries for Windows and macOS, it's efficient to download one of them and have a first impressive playground. Or you could make a build as follow:

Open the Visual Studio solution my_basic.sln on Windows to build an executable
Open the Xcode solution my_basic_mac.xcodeproj on macOS to build an macOS executable
If you were using a *nix OS, then use the makefile with a "make" toolchain to build an interpreter binary according to your specific platform

To compile an interpreter binary for your own platform manually, please follow the steps:

Retrieve at least core and shell folders for a minimum build
Setup your compile toolchain configuration
Compile core/my_basic.c and shell/main.c, they both require core/my_basic.h; then link up your own executable

The standalone interpreter supports three running modes:

Execute the binary without arguments to enter the interactive mode of MY-BASIC
Pass a file path to the binary to load and run that script file directly
Pass an argument -e followed by an expression to evaluate it and print the result, eg. -e "2 * (3 + 4)"

Type "HELP" and hint Enter under interactive mode to view full detail usage of the interpreter.

Combine with exist projects

MY-BASIC is cleanly written in a single C source file and an associated header file. Just copy core/my_basic.c and core/my_basic.h to your project folder and add them to a build configuration.

You can definitely link with MY-BASIC as a lib as well.

For more details about using MY-BASIC when it has be integrated with a project, please see MY-BASIC Quick Reference or read the Wiki pages.

Interpreter workflow diagram

It's necessary to know some principle of MY-BASIC before doing deep customization; nothing's better than a workflow diagram to get a first impression.

More detail are issued in the Wiki pages.

Wiki

The MY-BASIC Quick Reference includes most of the fundamental topics, however, it hasn't covered everything, such as the design principle, machinism behind MY-BASIC, effective practice, etc; all of them are issued in the Wiki:

Principles
Code with MY-BASIC
Understanding data type system in MY-BASIC
Standalone shell
- Extra functions
Integration
Customization
More scripting APIs
FAQ
- Is it possible to introduce another feature

References

Support MY-BASIC development/List of donors

You can support MY-BASIC development with a donation.

Or see the list of donors.

README.md

Contents