A matter of opinion?

[Jacob]

I've finally found some more time to put some more work into my own BASIC interpreter. And I came to wonder, for example in Yabasic, we have ":" to allow for multiple statements per line, and you're also allowed to write things like this:

Code:

if( 1 = 1 ) then print "wow, that's a surprise" fi

and

Code:

for i = 0 to 10 step 1 print "hello!" next i

and ":" allows you to do:

Code:

print "Hello: ";: print "you person";

These things, while they take up a small amount of space, makes code less readable(in my opinion), and I was wondering what your guys take on this is. Often BASIC is seen as an entry point to programming in general, and I was wondering if I should allow for things like this. Because in my opinion doing these things, while they makes code very small, they can make it a lot harder to read for someone new at the game.

So I'm simply wondering, what's your guys take on this? Personally I'm against it.

[Derek]

Hi,

in my opinion one statement per line is enough. Readability, no matter what the age or experience of the programmer, is the most important thing. When BASIC interpreters used line numbers and there was only a limited number of lines allowed there may have been a use for multistatement lines but that is no longer true.

Derek.

[aurelB]

I have only one command by line in Abasic.
Becose is developed on this way.
I dont have nothing against multiple statments by line
becose is sometimes use much less space.

[Jacob]

At AurelB:

That's also what I have at the moment, because it's simpler for me as a developer, but seeing as I've only ever really used one BASIC dialect(Yabasic), it would be interesting to know what more experienced BASIC programmers thought.

At Derek:

As I said, that's also what I was thinking, then it comes with the added bonus of removing just a tiny bit of work. Not that I'm lazy... Not at all 

An added bonus question would be, how important is functions for manipulating strings? I mainly use Yabasic for small scale number crunching and graphics, so I don't really know how much use these things see.

[Garrett]

The only possible reason to break a line down is if it is just so long that it far exceeds the limits of the editor's view.  But even then, how hard is it to simply scroll out a bit to read your code for that long line?

Only once in my life did I wish I could break a line down in a language I used, but since the language didn't support such, I found myself optimizing that line of code until it was much shorter.  In the end, that line of code ended up being short enough to fit within the view of the editor.

So from my experience, I don't see the need for being able to break a line down into multiple lines.

Besides, any line that is that long can likely be broken down into seperate lines of code anyway.

In the end, it's not so much the amount of lines of code in a program, it's the amount of characters.  And adding just one more function to check for multiple single line code will only add to the bulk of the interpreter and slow things down a bit.

As for string manipulation, that's up to you.  What's the intent and goal of your interpreter?  Graphics?  Games?  Scientific?  Mathmatical?  User Interface and General?

[aurelB]

functions for manipulating with strings is the main part of each
interpreter ,parser,lexer all that things operete with strings.
Variable call also work with strings becose you call variable by name not by
value.

[aurelB]

Jacob
If  i may ask you...
What kind of basic you prefer GUI - console or bouth?
And how will look your interpreter?

[Jacob]

Currently my plan is to implement it much like Yabasic, so you have a console, with the option for opening a window for graphics(But that's far out in the future, once I get things working).

[LanceGary]

I've finally found some more time to put some more work into my own BASIC interpreter. And I came to wonder, for example in Yabasic, we have ":" to allow for multiple statements per line, and you're also allowed to write things like this:

Code:

if( 1 = 1 ) then print "wow, that's a surprise" fi

and

Code:

for i = 0 to 10 step 1 print "hello!" next i

and ":" allows you to do:

Code:

print "Hello: ";: print "you person";

These things, while they take up a small amount of space, makes code less readable(in my opinion), and I was wondering what your guys take on this is. Often BASIC is seen as an entry point to programming in general, and I was wondering if I should allow for things like this. Because in my opinion doing these things, while they makes code very small, they can make it a lot harder to read for someone new at the game.

So I'm simply wondering, what's your guys take on this? Personally I'm against it.

In some early basics (GWBasic?) the If.. statement interacted with the ":" - so for example, if the If condition was true everything on the line containing the If got carried out (including additional statements separated by ":"), and if the If condition was false the interpreter would skip to a new line. So it may make a difference if you want to be able to read early code in your compiler/interpreter.

Lance

[E.K.Virtanen]

if( 1 = 1 ) then print "wow, that's a surprise" fi

Works, but i dont like it that way.

for i = 0 to 10 step 1 print "hello!" next i

Works, but i like that even less. Statements should be seperated with somethin. I basic scene, : has generally been the marker. So that line should (imo) look like; for i = 0 to 10 step 1 : print "hello!" : next i

print "Hello: ";: print "you person";

That is valid line in my books. There is two statements (prints) seperated as should. ; at the end of statement, only tells to the basic interpreter that line is not changed after keyword PRINT.

[Jacob]

Thanks for all the useful input on this topic guys.

E.K. I agree that the last one would be a reasonable use of the ":", so I'll probably implement that particular feature for separating multiple statements, while leaving out the option of making overly complex statements constructed without the use of ":". That way the user will have the option, but be forced to do it explicitly... So they have to know what they're doing 

LanceGary, thanks for the insight on earlier BASIC dialects, I didn't know those details. But I don't strive to make something that's fully compatible with older style BASICS, at most, it will be partially compatible with the style that Yabasic uses, with some changes.