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Copyright (C) 2011 - 2017 Wang Renxin. All rights reserved.
- Introduction
- Compatibility
- Main features
- Script at a glance
- Showcase
- Installation
- Interpreter workflow diagram
- Wiki
- References
- Support MY-BASIC development/List of donors
MY-BASIC is a lightweight cross-platform easy extendable BASIC interpreter written in pure C with about twenty thousand lines of source code. MY-BASIC is a dynamic typed programming language. It supports structured grammar, and implements a style of OOP called prototype-based programming paradigm, furthermore it offers a functional programming ability with lambda abstraction. It is aimed to be either an embeddable scripting language or a standalone interpreter. The core is very lightweight; all in a C source file and an associated header file; simpleness of source file layout and tightness dependency make it extraordinarily tough. Anyone even C programming newbies could learn how to use it and add new scripting interfaces in five minutes. It's able to easily combine MY-BASIC with an existing project in C, C++, Java, Objective-C, Swift, C# and many other languages. Script driven can make your projects more powerful, elegant and neat. It's also possible to learn how to build an interpreter from scratch with MY-BASIC, or build your own dialect easily based on it.
The prefix "MY-" in the name means either literally "My" or "Make Your", it's up to you.
It fits well on a large scale of Workstation, PC, Tablet, Pad, Mobile Phone, PDA, Video Game Console, Raspberry Pi, Arduino and even MCU; totally portable to Windows, macOS, Unix, Linux, iOS, Android, RTOS, etc.
May be used as an alternative of something like Lua.
For Arduino
There is an Arduino porting of MY-BASIC interpreter, with a totally rewritten shell and a user manual. See MY-BASIC ARDU for details.
MY-BASIC is a dynamic typed programming language with BASIC syntax and has a very dynamic nature; it makes it flexible and easy to use. MY-BASIC offers a wide range of features including:
- It is totally free to use MY-BASIC for commercial or noncommercial purpose under the MIT license
- Written in clean ANSI C, source code is portable to a dozen of platforms
- Lightweight (within memory usage less than 128KB), fast, and cuttable
- With both retro and modern BASIC syntax
- Case-insensitive tokenization, and many other indelible BASIC feelings
- Unicode support
- Prototype-based programming (OOP) paradigm, with reflection support
- Lambda abstraction enhanced functional programming
- Customizable referenced usertype support
- Collection construction and manipulation functions for
LIST
andDICT
- Automatic releasing of referenced objects (prototype, lambda, referenced usertype, list, dictionary, etc.) benefited from Reference Counting and Garbage Collection
- Dynamic typed integer, real, string, boolean, usertype, and other advanced types etc. with array support
- Standard numeric functions, and standard string functions
- Multiple source file support by
IMPORT
statement - Structured user customizable sub routine definition by
DEF/ENDDEF
support, with tail recursion optimization - Structured
IF/THEN/ELSEIF/ELSE/ENDIF
support - Structured
FOR/TO/STEP/NEXT
,FOR/IN/NEXT
,WHILE/WEND
,DO/UNTIL
support - Reserved retro
GOTO
,GOSUB/RETURN
support - Debug APIs
- Customizable memory pool
- High expansibility, easy to use APIs, easy to write customized scripting interfaces
- Powerful interactive ability to manipulate script facilities at native side; or to use native functionalities in script, and vice versa
- More features under development
You may wondering if it's possible to introduce another feature to MY-BASIC, then take a look at this page. I also write some of my plans on the language design page.
Come along with a usual "Hello World" code in MY-BASIC:
input "What is your name: ", n$
def greeting(a, b)
return a + " " + b + " by " + n$ + "."
enddef
print greeting("Hello", "world");
Read the MY-BASIC Quick Reference (especially the "Programming with BASIC" section) to get more details about how to program in MY-BASIC.
See the list for some user creations.
Don't forget to share with us about your creativity!
This repository contains precompiled binaries for Windows and macOS, it's easy to download one of them and have a first impressive playground. Or you could make a build as follow:
- Open the Visual Studio solution
my_basic.sln
on Windows to build an executable - Open the Xcode solution
my_basic_mac.xcodeproj
on macOS to build a macOS executable - If you were using other *nix OS, then use the
makefile
with a "make" toolchain to build an interpreter binary according to your specific platform
To compile an interpreter binary for your own platform manually, please follow these steps:
- Retrieve everything under
core
andshell
folders for a minimum build - Setup your compile toolchain configuration
- Compile
core/my_basic.c
andshell/main.c
, they both requirecore/my_basic.h
; then link up an executable
The standalone interpreter supports three running modes:
- Execute the binary without arguments to enter the interactive mode of MY-BASIC
- Pass a file path to the binary to load and run that script file directly
- Pass an argument
-e
followed by an expression to evaluate it and print the result, as a simple calculator, eg.-e "2 * (3 + 4)"
Type "HELP" and hint Enter under interactive mode to view full detail usages of the interpreter.
MY-BASIC is cleanly written in a single C source file and an associated header file. Just copy core/my_basic.c
and core/my_basic.h
to your project folder and add them to a build configuration.
You can definitely link with MY-BASIC as a lib as well.
For more details about using MY-BASIC when it has been integrated with a project, please see MY-BASIC Quick Reference or read the Wiki pages.
It's necessary to know some principle of MY-BASIC before doing deep customization; nothing's better than a workflow diagram to get a first image.
More details are issued on the Wiki pages below.
The MY-BASIC Quick Reference includes most of the fundamental topics, however, it hasn't covered everything, such as the design principle, machinism behind MY-BASIC, effective practice, etc; these topics are issued on the Wiki:
- Principles
- Code with MY-BASIC
- Understanding data type system in MY-BASIC
- Standalone shell
- Integration
- Customization
- More scripting APIs
- FAQ
I need your supports to keep this project alive. Consider supporting MY-BASIC development with a donation, if it's useful for you.
One-off donation via PayPal.