🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <Bu21uG.CCr@ireq.hydro.qc.ca> robert@ireq.hydro.qc.ca writes:
>
>and 
>	- support for pointer. That is a must.

	Actually I'd rather *not* see pointers in BASIC. As a person who codes
	all the time in C and likes it, I nonetheless like the purity of
	BASIC's call - by - reference, no - pointers syntax. Call by reference
	provides power enough at the scale BASIC is intended to work. (Indeed,
	it covers most of the normal uses of pointers.) Yes, I know a heap would
	be handy, but the language also has variable length strings, another
	common reason for pointer usage... I'd say it would be a mistake.

>	- array inside structure (only available in PBDS7.1)

	Agreed. It's a very nice touch. I'm also tempted to ask for anonymous unions,
	but they might be more trouble than they're worth.

	I'm told there's a shareware BASIC compiler out there. Perhaps if we 
	supported that author we might get the features we're asking for.

	Some of these features may well be in Power BASIC already, come to think 
	of it. Anyone know?

>	- conditionnal compilation like in C

	Ah, the eternal #ifdef. The problem here, with both conditional compilation
	and macros, is that they're somewhat at odds with the threaded -
	interpreter environment. Not saying it's impossible, but doing them inside
	that environment would, I suspect, be very tricky indeed.

	However, it's quite easy to write your own preprocessor, if you're willing
	not to use the environment.

>	- Some sort of Object Oriented feature

	Not a bad idea. Visual BASIC is already moving in this direction. But
	you can write very object - oriented code with the existing user - defined
	types and a strong naming convention, again thanks to the wonders of
	call by reference.


-- 
Tom Boutell, boutell@cshl.org

Clausthaler is the best non - alcoholic beer in the known universe.