Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!psuvax1!rutgers!mephisto!udel!new
From: new@udel.EDU (Darren New)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: AmigaBasic
Message-ID: <22146@estelle.udel.EDU>
Date: 15 Jun 90 22:24:57 GMT
References: <1930@bnlux0.bnl.gov> <207@cbmger.UUCP>
Reply-To: new@ee.udel.edu (Darren New)
Organization: University of Delaware
Lines: 29

In article <207@cbmger.UUCP> peterk@cbmger.UUCP (Peter Kittel GERMANY) writes:
>In article <1930@bnlux0.bnl.gov> creutz@bnlux0.bnl.gov (michael creutz) writes:
>>Amigabasic does have serious shortcomings.  It often crashes
>>the machine
>Yes, but we know already how to work around all these caveats.
>E.g. running on a 68020 you shouldn't use real SUB's!

How about posting this list of crashes and how to avoid them?
AmigaBASIC crashes on my A1000!

>Though AREXX also is a full programming language, it is not as easy
>to use (ok, I don't have experience with it yet, only looked through some
>books and examples) and not as general purpose as AmigaBasic.

I disagree. There are some shortcomings of ARexx (no pass-by-reference)
but other than that it is indeed general purpose. I just finished a
random dungeon generator that I was going to do in AmigaBASIC except
BASIC crashed my machine.  I would estimate that the two programs
would have been of similar length.  The other shortcomings of
ARexx are lack of a built-in editor (big deal...) and non-trivial
access to graphics, sound, etc (have to send messages to another
program).

>I fear [AmigaVision] wouldn't serve you for eg a 5 line program to do some
>re-formatting of a big data file.

I suspect you are right.  But ARexx would (if not better than BASIC).
I always say, "BASIC is the language for programs too short to bother
to save on disk." :-)                   -- Darren