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- IBM System/36 BASIC was an interpreter for the IBM System/36 midrange computer. System/36 BASIC was first offered in 1983, and as such, contained many of the trappings that a BASIC program would have encountered in the time period of the IBM PC, the Commodore 64, the VIC-20, the TRS-80, or many other offerings of the Seventies and early Eighties. As such, S/36 BASIC uses conventions that are no longer standard in modern BASICs, such as line numbers, and does not support newer features such as WHILE/WEND, DO/ENDDO, WITH/END WITH, procedures, properties, and so forth. BASIC interpreters written in the Seventies tended to "do odd things odd ways". For example, on the Apple II, a programmer could embed a command into a program via PRINT, when prefaced by the character string <span class="kr">CHR$</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="il">4</span><span class="p">)</span>. PEEK and POKE could be used in various BASICs to examine memory content or change it, or even to create an ad hoc machine language program and then run it. System/36 BASIC tends to stay away from these odd conventions; however, the programmer could call for the Alarm (a buzzing sound made by the terminal) via <span class="kr">PRINT</span><span class="w"> </span><span class="kr">CHR$</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="il">7</span><span class="p">)</span>. BASIC statements are expected to be entered in capital letters, and while the operator can press Cmd2 to use lowercase, the BASIC interpreter will convert non-comment keywords into uppercase. So that BASIC could be useful in a midrange computing environment, IBM added extensions to the language that were specific to the hardware and software conventions of the IBM System/36 Family, such as the WORKSTN file, support for indexed, direct, and sequential disk files, the ability to open and close multiple printer files, and LOAD/SAVE from libraries on the fixed disk. (en)
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| rdfs:comment
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- IBM System/36 BASIC was an interpreter for the IBM System/36 midrange computer. System/36 BASIC was first offered in 1983, and as such, contained many of the trappings that a BASIC program would have encountered in the time period of the IBM PC, the Commodore 64, the VIC-20, the TRS-80, or many other offerings of the Seventies and early Eighties. As such, S/36 BASIC uses conventions that are no longer standard in modern BASICs, such as line numbers, and does not support newer features such as WHILE/WEND, DO/ENDDO, WITH/END WITH, procedures, properties, and so forth. (en)
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