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From: cerberus@caen.engin.umich.edu (R Eric Bennett)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: BASIC for NeXT? (was Re: NeXT,Mac,NFS)
Summary: BASIC- Why?
Keywords: BASIC Pascal C Why?
Message-ID: <1990Nov16.061450.6894@engin.umich.edu>
Date: 16 Nov 90 06:14:50 GMT
References: <1990Nov13.054856.2988@utstat.uucp> <11220@milton.u.washington.edu>
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Organization: University of Michigan Engineering, Ann Arbor
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In article <11220@milton.u.washington.edu> cyliao@hardy.acs.washington.edu (Chun-Yao Liao) writes:
>In article <1990Nov13.054856.2988@utstat.uucp> philip@utstat.uucp (Philip McDunnough) writes:
>>
>>By the way: Is there a Basic for the NeXT?
>
>Sort of.  There is a BASIC that comes a s an example of p2c translator.
>I guess it was a BASIC system written in pascal. The p2c translate the
>pascal source to C and compile it with cc.  Anyway, I didn't do any 
>"intensive" test to see if it's a "full" functionning BASIC, but I
>tried some simple program, and it worked.

The only problem I have with this is why would you want to translate?
If you are going to translate BASIC to Pascal and then to C, you kind of miss
the point of BASIC anyway (or one of the main points).  BASIC is interepreted
(usually).  No compile time. And you know where your errors are with your
code because it hangs at a specific, and known, line.  Translating to Pascal
preserves none of this.

Learning Pascal after using BASIC is not hard.  Particularly since Pascal 
supports "goto".  The big step is learning to define type your variables.
And if you're not going to have that comfy interpreted environment, then 
you might as well learn Pascal.  Another nice feature of BASIC is not having
type your variables, something else that can't be preserved when translating
to Pascal.

My purpose is not to flame.  Chun-Yao wanted to know if there was BASIC on the
NeXT.  Philip told him the closest thing he knew that ws available.  My purpose
is to point out that the solution just doesn't cut (in my own eyes).  To get
a debugged BASIC program ported, this solution would be great.  But developing
programs in BASIC, this solution just doesn't cut it.  The developer might as
well learn Pascal.  It doesn't take that long to learn how to do BASICy things
in Pascal.


Eric Bennett