dlbaer@helm.UUCP (Dennis L. Baer) (05/02/87)
This is being posted in this group in the assumption that this group is gatewayed to the arpanet in which the ibm digest is also part of the arpanet. Russ Nelson in a letter dated April 21, 1987 said some things about SPL that were uncomplementary. He complained that SPL was a pre- processor. SPL is not a preprocessor because the Structured Programming Language does not resemble BASIC in its format or in its philosophy. A preprocessor is a program that processes a program that is a superset of a language or target and then produces that target or language. A translator is a processor that translates one language to another. The source language is SPL and the object language is BASIC how can one explain this more plainly? If Mr. Nelson had read the press release more carefully, like in the first paragraph, he would have known that the Structured Programming Language is implemented as a translator. This has advantages. BASIC is portable to many machines that have BASIC compilers. Beleieve it or not but Compiled BASIC is faster than Turbo PASCAL in many instances. The SPL processor creates an uncomplicated BASIC program that can be compiled on many more BASIC compilers than if a person wrote his/her initial program in Quick BASIC or Turbo BASIC, or True BASIC. Besides it allows owners of all these compilers to compile translated SPL programs. As I said that even BASIC compilers on MACINTOSH, AMIGA, ATARI ST, and CP/M can take translated SPL programs and compile them. Try writing structured code in QuickBASIC, Turbo BASIC, and True BASIC and porting them to CP/M, or other machines even as the TI 99/4? SPL cooperates with many BASIC compilers. The nice thing about translating to BASIC is that you can patch the resulting BASIC program and link it with others or combine the source codes before compiling. SPL has better I/O, STRING handling, FOR loops, IF THEN ELSE constructs than PASCAL and you have variable declarations that you don't have in Quick BASIC or Turbo BASIC but then again I am recommending that a person buy Quick BASIC to cooperate with SPL. Your old BASIC programs do not become obsolete when you work with SPL. If you used PASCAL you would have to have your BASIC programs retranslated. With SPL you do not. Since SPL translates to BASIC, SPL programs can become 640k with either the use of Quick BASIC, in its linked compiled BASIC programs or with Turbo BASIC which allows an individual module that can be greater than 64k. PASCAL limits you to 64k program and 64k data. So you may not like the idea of SPL being translated to BASIC, Mr. Russell but others will find it interesting, advantageous, and flexible, especailly there are translators that convert BASIC to C, and BASIC to FORTRAN. SPL has many potential target languages. SPL creates an uncomplicated BASIC program. Try it for yourself. Mr. Russell complains even though as shareware HE DID NOT HAVE TO PAY ONE RED CENT FOR THE SOFTWARE. All he lost was some TIME. I have found that some people hate SPL but a lot of others DO LIKE IT VERY MUCH. I thank the net and the digest for letting me defend my software. All the information in the press release was factual and NOT HYPE! I look forward to hearing from those who require software support for SPL and from those who use it and want to tell me about their applications. Respectfully, Dennis Baer 25 MIller Road Farmingdale,NY 11735 516 694 5872 ....!ihnp4!iguana!polyob!polyof!helm!dlbaer