stewart@houxf.UUCP (Bill Stewart HO 4K-435 x0705) (02/11/85)
While I normally disparage BASIC along with the rest of you, there are
a few places it's useful. I tend to use it for jobs that take too much
arithmetic for shell, but are too small to bother writing in C
FOR I = 1 TO 43
PRINT "FOO";I
NEXT I
I suppose I could use expr (terribly ugly), or K Shell arithmetic, but
for a throwaway program BASIC is ok.
The other places it's useful are mainly for memoryless microcomputers
(a friend of mine had a 4K BASIC that ran on the Data General
card-reader controller at Cornell), but I suppose FORTH is replacing it
for those applications.
Anyway, I know of two BASIC systems available for UNIX - AT&T sells a
fairly sophisticated BASIC system (call 1-800-828-UNIX), and we also
have an in-house product (part of the Exptools package) that was
probably released along with the Toolchest Package announced at
Uniforum.
--
Bill Stewart ho95c!wcs AT&T Bell Labs, Holmdel NJ
HO 4K-435 x0705 (201-949-0705)
{allegra, ucbvax!ihnp4, decvax!harpo}!houxf!stewart
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