Timeline for Variances in Basic highest line numbers
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
10 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 31, 2022 at 12:24 | comment | added | Maury Markowitz | @hackerb9 - and as to the 32k number, this is simply a side-effect of using a 16-bit integer to store the numbers, which was by far the most common solution. Some dialects used the high-bit to flag immediate mode, which meant that the range was 0 to 32767. This does not imply any common code or design, its just a side-effect of the way numbers are stored in 8 and 16-bit machines. | |
| Aug 31, 2022 at 12:16 | comment | added | Maury Markowitz | @hackerb9 - Sorry, I didn't see your question above until now - the repo is here: github.com/maurymarkowitz/RetroBASIC | |
| Aug 24, 2022 at 22:00 | comment | added | hackerb9 | By the way, it looks like BASIC-PLUS was a descendant of DEC's BASIC-8 which, according to wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_number#BASIC), had a maximum line number of 2045. | |
| Aug 24, 2022 at 21:29 | comment | added | hackerb9 | Your question about Atari's BASIC using signed numbers makes me wonder if it might share lineage with VAX BASIC which also had a max of 32767. According to Wikipedia, VAX BASIC was based on DEC's BASIC-PLUS for the PDP-11 from 1972. DEC's manual ( archive.org/details/…) states the max line number is 32767. | |
| Aug 24, 2022 at 21:23 | comment | added | hackerb9 | Do you have a link to your lex/yacc code and the results? I'm curious what the maximums were and what the "reserved for system use" line numbers were used for on various machines. (Also, does "-ve" mean "negative"? You may want to change that in your answer as it was confusing.) | |
| Oct 21, 2020 at 10:30 | comment | added | TheBeardyMan | While BBC BASIC did accept 0 as a line number, an error at line 0 would be reported with the "at line 0" omitted as if it were an immediate mode error. | |
| Jan 16, 2020 at 15:06 | comment | added | Maury Markowitz | You still have to parse the number :-) It's all regex in the end. | |
| Jan 16, 2020 at 2:20 | comment | added | dave | Why do you need a parser to check the range used? Can't you just look at the last line of the file? | |
| Jan 15, 2020 at 18:02 | history | edited | Maury Markowitz | CC BY-SA 4.0 | added 93 characters in body |
| Jan 15, 2020 at 17:37 | history | answered | Maury Markowitz | CC BY-SA 4.0 |