On 4/25/2012 14:18, Warp wrote:
>    If I recall correctly, the original BASIC, and the vast majority of
> clones for a pretty long time, didn't even have the concept of a function.

Correct. Raise your hand if you've written Dartmouth BASIC.   _O/

> They had subroutines (the most typical keyword to jump to one being GOSUB)
> which were just slightly fancier GOTO labels.

Yep.

>    The only control structure other than GOTO was an IF (and you were lucky
> if your brand of BASIC supported an ELSE branch.) Anything that couldn't be
> done with IF had to be done with GOTO.

No, there was FOR/NEXT. I don't think there was a WHILE.  The THEN was a 
line number, not a statement.

>    And the language was completely untyped, of course. Typically you could
> have two types: An integral (usually floating point) and a string. That's
> about it.

There were strings and integers, yes.

> Some variants possibly supported some kind of array or enumeration
> structure. Forget about creating your own types or data containers.

They all had arrays. Lots of the original 8-bit BASIC interpreters had one 
array of integers that basically filled all the extra memory.

>    Also, originally every single line was numbered.

Indeed. And this is because there was no defined editor. You could type 
lines into BASIC and edit your program using nothing but the interpreter.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Oh no! We're out of code juice!"
   "Don't panic. There's beans and filters
    in the cabinet."

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