Yabasic

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Yabasic (Yet Another BASIC) is a free BASIC programming language interpreter for the Win32 and Unix platforms. As of version 2.760, colour line graphics have been introduced. It is also relatively small in file size at around 250 kilobytes.

Beyond "conventional" features, Yabasic offers structured programming (various block structures, named subroutines with return values, code modules with separate namespaces; on the other hand, composite data structures are missing). Passing of arguments is always by value, except for arrays, which are always by reference. The interpreter is very lenient in syntactical matters -- for example, both color and colour are legal variants for the same command. Likewise, there is a number of different versions for if and for constructs, giving the programmer freedom of choice in his design.

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Compiling at Runtime

The interpreter features also the possibility to take string variables and "compile" them at runtime. For example

x$= "sub printme: print \"Hello world!\": end sub"
compile(x$)

would create a new procedure,

sub printme()
...

This procedure can be invoked the 'traditional' way,

printme()

or via the slightly more clever

y$= "printme()"
execute(y$)

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Other Features

Another useful feature is the bind-command, allowing creation of standalone executables by linking the interpreter to the source code. (Size for the executables starts around 250 kByte.)

Execution speed of the interpreter is reasonably high.

A version of Yabasic is available for Sony's PlayStation 2. It comes free with the console in Europe and Australasia. The demo disc containing the Yabasic interpreter is a PAL disc and is not intended for the United States or Japanese PlayStation 2 markets. It is recommended to have an additional USB-compatible keyboard for the PlayStation version of Yabasic because programming with a control pad is rather impractical. Yabasic programs created on a PlayStation can be stored on memory cards for later retrieval or swapping with friends.