The EndBASIC programming language - CLI
EndBASIC is an interpreter for a BASIC-like language and is inspired by Amstrad's Locomotive BASIC 1.1 and Microsoft's QuickBASIC 4.5. Like the former, EndBASIC intends to provide an interactive environment that seamlessly merges coding with immediate visual feedback. Like the latter, EndBASIC offers higher-level programming constructs and strong typing.
EndBASIC offers a simplified and restricted environment to learn the foundations of programming and focuses on features that can quickly reward the programmer. These features include things like a built-in text editor, commands to render graphics, and commands to interact with the hardware of a Raspberry Pi. Implementing this kind of features has priority over others such as performance or a much richer language.
EndBASIC is written in Rust and runs both on the web and locally on a variety of operating systems and platforms, including macOS, Windows, and Linux.
EndBASIC is free software under the Apache 2.0 License.
What's in this crate?
endbasic
provides the command line binary for the EndBASIC language. This
binary offers an interpreter for scripts as well as a fully-interactive REPL.
Launch the interpreter by typing endbasic
and then type HELP
inside it for
further guidance.
Interactive usage
endbasic
comes with a REPL command-line interface that offers fancy line
editing features and built-in documentation for all available features. You can
start the interactive interface by typing:
endbasic
and you can exit it at any time by pressing CTRL+D.
The HELP
command lets you obtain a list of all possible commands as well as
detailed usage information for any of them.
The interactive interface has support for manipulating a stored program: that
is, a program that lives in the memory of the interpreter. To get started, use
the EDIT
command to enter new lines into the program, LIST
to inspect its
contents and RUN
to execute it. You can save and restore programs from disk
by using the SAVE
and LOAD
commands respectively, which by default are
backed by an endbasic
subdirectory under your Documents
folder. You can
then inspect the contents of this directory with the DIR
command.
The lines that EDIT
prints during program editing are not meaningful to the
program and only exist to support interactive editing. Line numbers are
typically multiples of ten to allow you to insert lines in-between others. For
example: if your program previously had lines 20
and 30
but you forgot a
statement between those, you can do EDIT 15
to enter that statement. If you
run out of lines, or if you want to tidy up their numbers to be multiples of ten
again, use the RENUM
command.
Finally, use CLEAR
to erase all variables set in the interactive editor, and
NEW
to also erase the stored program from memory and start afresh.
Scripting usage
You can give endbasic
the name of a program to execute:
endbasic some-program.bas
It is important to note that some features (like the HELP
builtin command or
all stored program manipulation commands) are only available in the interactive
interface.
Examples
You can peek into the tests
subdirectory of this repository to see actual
EndBASIC code samples. Look for all files with a .bas
extension.