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Some features of a real‐time BASIC executive
Author(s) -
Heher A. D.
Publication year - 1976
Publication title -
software: practice and experience
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.437
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1097-024X
pISSN - 0038-0644
DOI - 10.1002/spe.4380060311
Subject(s) - debugging , simplicity , computer science , feature (linguistics) , documentation , process (computing) , variable (mathematics) , programming language , line (geometry) , control (management) , arithmetic , artificial intelligence , mathematics , linguistics , mathematical analysis , philosophy , geometry , epistemology
A real‐time BASIC executive has been developed for process measurement and control. This paper describes two features of the executive which demonstrate that some of BASIC'S constraints are unnecessarily restrictive. The first feature permits alterations to a running program to be made on‐line. Either statements or commands can be entered. This provides a powerful debugging tool and enables an extended command language to be implemented with minimal effort. The second feature provides a number of documentation aids. These include variable names of unrestricted length and end‐of‐line comments. The implementation of these facilities is described and examples of their use are given. It is shown that neither of the features is extravagant in its demands on either memory space or execution time. The features are therefore of interest for their simplicity and economy as well as their utility.