my-basic

Why are existing script interpreters so complex? Why is it so difficult to integrate with them? Why not try MY-BASIC today! Scripting should be simple and enjoyable.

Introduction

MY-BASIC is a lightweight cross-platform easy extendable BASIC interpreter written in pure C with about 7000 lines of source code. Its grammar is similar to structured BASIC. It is aimed to be either an embeddable scripting language or a standalone interpreter. The core is pretty light; all in a C source file and an associated header file. You are able to easily combine MY-BASIC with an existing project in C, C++, Objective-C, etc. Scripting driven can make your projects more powerful, elegant and neat.

Main features

It is totally free to use MY-BASIC for individual or commercial purpose under the MIT license
Written in clean ANSI C, source code portable
With most common BASIC syntax
Lightweight (within memory usage less than 128KB) and fast
Case-insensitive tokenization
Integer, float point, string, boolean, user defined data types with array support, etc.
Structured IF-THEN-ELSEIF-ELSE-ENDIF support
Structured FOR-TO-STEP-NEXT/WHILE-WEND/DO-UNTIL support
Structured user costomized sub routine definition by DEF/ENDDEF support
GOTO/GOSUB-RETURN support
Standard numeric functions, and standard string functions
Debug APIs
Customizable memory pool
High expansibility, easy to use APIs, easy to write customized scripting interfaces
It's able to use it as a standalone interpreter, or integrate it with existing projects in C, C++, Objective-C, etc.
It's able to learn how to build an interpreter from scratch from MY-BASIC
It's able to build your own dialect based on MY-BASIC
More features/modules under developing

Scripting at a glance

Come along with a traditional "hello world" script in MY-BASIC:

print "What is your name: "
input 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.

Interpreter workflow diagram

Installation

Use standalone interpreter binary

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

Open the Visual Studio solution my_basic.sln on Windows, open the XCode solution my_basic_mac.xcodeproj on OS X, or use the makefile with "make" toolchain to build an interpreter binary

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

Retrieve at least core and shell folders for minimum build
Setup your compile toolchain configuration
Use your compiler to compile core/my_basic.c and shell/main.c, including core/my_basic.h is required for both source files, then link up your own executable

The standalone interpreter supports three modes.

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

Combine with exist projects

MY-BASIC is cleanly written in a single C source file and an associated header file. Just copy my_basic.c and 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's already integrated with exist projects, please see MY-BASIC Quick Reference.

Wiki

References

You can support MY-BASIC development with a donation: