An assembly language BASIC compile and go system, initially for x86-64.
The project is in its earliest stages of development, and I have little spare time, so don't expect much. Code in this repository can change and be restructured without prior warning.
To clone the repository, don't forget the "--recursive" option on "git clone".
To compile this package, you need to install a C development environment first, and then NASM (the Netwide Assembler), and then the SDL2 development package. On Debian, Ubuntu and other similar Linux distros, simply write "sudo apt install build-essential nasm libsdl2-dev" to accomplish that.
After making sure you have those tools and libraries, type "make -B" to build the program.
Make sure you have the Linux version of "git" and "perl" installed. Use "sudo apt install git perl" (on Ubuntu/WSL) to accomplish that. Since file attributes are important, make sure you're on a native Linux file system before issuing the "git clone --recursive URL" command.
To use AsmBASIC, either run it on the command line with "./asmbasic" or create a desktop launcher for it to run it from the desktop.
When run from the command line, you can specify the "--help" option to see its command line parameters, as in "./asmbasic --help".
In Standard I/O terminal emulation (switched on with the "--stdio" option), the compile and go system currently enters a loop asking for BASIC input lines, tokenizes them and runs them through the syntax analyzer. It then outputs the syntax tree.
In default or SDL mode (default, or switched on with the "--sdl" option), the compile and go system currently enters a loop asking for BASIC input lines, tokenizes them and runs them through the syntax analyzer. It then outputs the syntax tree.
To get the previous behavior, (also) specify the "--testtok" option, which will instead enter tokenizer testing mode and outputting the tokenized form as well as the detokenized form of the input lines.
To print the parsing tree, specify the "--dumppt" option, which will output it to standard output and then exit the program. Since parts of it are naturally self-recursive, branches that have already been printed are output as "...".
To debug the syntax analyzer (tree node creation/deletion), specify the "--stndebug" option, which logs node creation/deletion to the console.
To print the syntax tree, specify the "--stnprint" option.
To print the cooked syntax tree, specify the "--csnprint" option (currently always enabled).
Some of the currently defined limits are as follows:
The current maximum line length is 8191 bytes of UTF-8 text. However, the current maximum line editing length in the SDL driver is 1023 Unicode code points.
The current maximum length of string constants is 1004 bytes of UTF-8 text.
The current maximum length of identifiers is 1004 bytes of UTF-8 text.
Unicode support is currently limited to 8 bit code points (lowest Unicode bank).
The user-modifiable character set in the SDL driver is currently 256 characters of fixed 8 x 12 pixels.
The SDL driver's text screen is currently fixed to 80 x 25 8-bit character cells with 8-bit attribute information, which consists of 4 bit foreground color and 4 bit background color. The user-modifiable palette is currently fixed to 16 colors. Text color consists of 8 foreground and background inks each, which can be selected from the 16 color palette (mainly for ANSI CSI sequence compatibility).
Since the code is currently in its initial development stages, it might be in a state that cannot be used (like, at all), at any given time. If this happens, you might notify me of the circumstance, and I will upload a working version as soon as possible. If I remember, I will make tags at various points during development, so you can go back to a specific version that was usable before. As soon as the project is far along enough, I will stop making breaking changes to the master, and instead develop on feature branches.