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BASICAID THE BASIC PROGRAMMERS FRIEND VERSION 5.0 FEB ,1987 All RIGHTS RESERVED (SUPERSEDES V4.0 dated 1986) COPYRIGHT (c) 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987 by Downlink Systems Inc. This document describes the BASICAID Basic source enhancement system, version 5.00, which was created by Downlink Sys. in FEBRUARY of 1987. INTRODUCTION BASICAID is the copyrighted property of Downlink Sys. Inc. You are granted a limited license to use , and to copy it and distribute it, provided that the following conditions are met: 1) No fee may be charged for such copying and distribution. 2) BASICAID may ONLY be distributed in its original, unmodified state. Contributions for the use of this program will be appreciated, and should be sent to: Downlink Systems Inc. c/o D. Conner 1377 K. STREET N.W. SUITE 189 WASHINGTON D.C. 20005 You may not use this product in a commercial environment or a governmental organization without paying a license fee of $25. Site licenses and commercial distribution licenses are available. A program disk and printed documentation are available for $25. See the order form in the back of this manual for more details. BASICAID is user supported software. This means that you may copy the shareware version freely and give the copies away to anyone you wish, at no cost. They in turn are requested to send in a contri- bution if they decide to use it. The user supported software concept (often referred to as shareware) is an attempt to provide software at low cost. The cost of offering a new product by conventional means is staggering, and hence dissuades many independent authors and small companies from developing and promoting their ideas. User supported software is an attempt to develop a new marketing channel, where products can be introduced at low cost. If user supported software works, then everyone will benefit. The user will benefit by receiving quality products at low cost, and by being able to "test drive" software thoroughly before purchasing it. The author benefits by being able to enter the commercial software arena without first needing large sources of venture capital. But it can only work with your support. We're not just talking about BASICAID, but about all user supported software. If you obtain a user supported program from a friend or colleague, and are still using it after a couple of weeks, then it is obviously worth something to you, and a contribution should be sent. Upon receipt of a contribution, you become a registered user and will receive a "full" feature, serial- ized version of BASICAID. This is a complete rewrite of version 4.x. BASICAID has been rewritten in QUICK BASIC 2.00. To support both monochrome and CGA monitors, the user interface has been changed to use an enhanced version of BASWIND window routines. These WINDOW routines hopefully provide a common interface across monitor types. BASICAID takes advantage of pop up, pop over, pop list and general window type formats. The QUICK BASIC screen format has been followed. This was not initially intentionally done, but it evolved toward and to this "look and somewhat feel". There is no mouse support, at this time, for the window interface, but look for it later. !! NOTE NOTE NOTE !! Version 5.0 now allows ALL forms of stored basic programs to be used as input. ** The option to additionally process protected BASIC programs is available ** ------------------------------ ** only to Registered users ** ------------------------ !! This is not a demo version, its an rewrite of 4.0 !! Therefore the source is no longer being distributed, due to the confidential nature of the logic that duplicates the MS BASIC decryption routines! However, the decryption routine(s) are for sale for inclusions in your works, at a price to be negotiated at the time of sale. This version , 5.0, is now compatible with MS-BASIC 2.0 COMPILER and IBM BASIC 2.0 COMPILER, in that any program that will run under the DOS BASIC INTERPRETER can be processed by 'BASICAID'. Also command line RUNTIME options may be entered. Editorial comment: Contrary to PC-SIG'S statement that we Shareware authors make big bucks, Shareware as it exists is NOT working. We find that we to are guilty of the same abuse of other Shareware products. This attitude that PC-SIG and others give of Shareware being public domain is totally false and is/will cause Shareware software to cease to exist or take on a 'restricted usage' form. This is what we have been forced to do with past and all future Shareware products. A 'restricted usage' form of software will be released. All the features will be included but in a form as to entice users to register to get all the whistles, bells and additional features that are worth the registration fee. As an example, just the other day we had a MAJOR hardware vendor come by to give a demo of some of their products. They had the shareware comm program, Qmodem, listed in their document as a "public domain" freebee that they could give us to use with their async device. Can you believe the mentality of such a LARGE company. Obviously the 'something for nothing' approach to shareware is becoming the standard way of thinking. We believe in the free exchange of ideas for intellectual advance. We got to the power user level with the help of all the "public domain" programs, source listings and free exchange of information , and that is why we have tried to provide source to all our contributions to PD also. !! END COMMENT !! Have you ever acquired a basic program from a friend and spent a lot of time just trying to untangle the program logic and statements, of course you have. Since each persons programming style is different, such as spacing, inden- tation and such, you could use your time better if all programs were about the same style. Are you an optimization and speed nut, as we are, especially when running a program under the interpreter. We don't like to wait a second longer than necessary. Of course by now we use the BASIC COMPILER as much as possible, since we would rather wait 2 minutes than have to wait 20 minutes to see the results of our lost sleep. We have seen several packages , not all with the same functions or range,selling from 20 to 80 dollars. Well this is several years worth of work,to you for free ,if you desire. As a basic overview the program will, compress,a basic program and remove remarks, expand a program by that we mean it will separate multiple statements per basic line into one or more statements, generate cross references on program variables and basic reserved words, and probably the most important will generate a cross reference showing all references to a specific line number that was referenced by a GOTO,GOSUB,ELSE,THEN,ERL,RESTORE OR RESUME statement. You can then find all variables, areas of code and such that are not referenced (and remove for storage savings) as well as on overview of program flow to find out how the program got to a specific line number. EACH FUNCTIONAL OPTION OF THE PROGRAM IS DISCUSSED BELOW: 1). EXPAND A BASIC PROGRAM ---------------------- Will expand a compressed program, one that has multiple BASIC statements per line, separated by a ":" into one or more uniquely numbered basic lines with one or more statements per line. During the expanding some text compression will be done, to remove extraneous spaces and such. Also an expanded listing can be requested, that will be printed during the expansion. An expanded, output disk file, called "TEMPFILE.BAS" will be created also. Rename the "TEMPFILE.BAS" if you want to save it as the new version of your program. Note that the input basic program being expanded must be sufficiently sequenced to allow the insertion of new lines or the program will end with such a message. For example,if there are 7 Basic statements on a line, separated by ":", then if the original program was numbered by 5'S, the program will separate the line into 6 more BASIC lines each with a line number 1 greater than the previous line number. If you are processing an unnumbered BASIC program, or one generated with unreferenced line numbers removed, a new line number will be assigned to the unnumbered statement. 2). COMPRESS A BASIC PROGRAM ------------------------ Will compress text (remove extraneous spaces and ":" and such) as well as combine separate Basic lines into single lines with as many logical statements per line as possible, and optionally remove unreferenced line numbers from the compressed program for use with the '/n' option of the BASIC compiler. By logical, we mean that any "REMARK" or "IF" or "DATA" statements will not have lines added to them. Also any line referenced by a logic branch (GOTO,GOSUB..ECT) will not be appended to any other line. You may request a listing of the compressed program be produced during the compression run, but will slow the program down, unless you have a print spooler installed. A compressed program disk file, named "TEMPCOMP.BAS" is created. Don't forget to rename "TEMPCOMP.BAS" if you want it to be your new working version. Also for version 2.0 (and above), an expanded file ,"TEMPFILE.BAS", is also created to speed up the compress logic so that it will not have to repeat the expansion logic and do as much error checking. Also with version 3.0 , and above, if during compression you request that unreferenced line numbers be removed and the input basic program already has unnumbered lines or multiple statements per line,the expand- ed 'TEMPFILE' is written without line numbers on statements. What this allows is that you may input a BASIC program that is not sufficiently line numbered, so that during the temporary expansion process,the next assigned incremental line number would conflict with an already coded statement. 3). DATANAME AND RESERVED WORD CROSS REFERENCE ------------------------------------------ Will print a cross reference of Basic reserved words (such as GOTO,PRINT,CALL..ect). Will print a cross reference (ascending on variable name) of all user defined program variables. This would be great for finding statements that define or modify a variable. Any type of BASIC explicit variable state ,such as "!" or "#" or "%" or "$" are ignored, only the variable name which consists of the characters "A-Z","." and "0-9" are considered a unique name. You may have noticed that a variable name may be defined as being one of several variable types. For example "A!" , "A#" , "A%", "A$" , "A(" where "A(" is part of a "DIM", would all be recognized to the cross reference as the same variable, but different by BASIC. By the way, you may define a variable with a terminating ".", to also make it unique. For example "SPACES" is a reserved word, but "SPACES." or "SPACES.$" or "SPACES.%" are processed by BASIC as user defined variables. ALSO YOU COULD HAVE THE FOLLOWING CODE AND IT WOULD WORK: 10 DIM A(10) 20 A=0 30 FOR A=1 TO 10 40 A(A)=A 50 NEXT A 60 END CONFUSING BUT NEAT, HUH. 4). LINE NUMBER CROSS REFERENCE --------------------------- Will produce a (ascending by line number) cross reference, listing any line number that was reference by another line number and the referencing line number. This line number cross reference table is also used in the option to compress a program. So that we don't throw away "REMARK" lines that are branched to.. You should use the listing produced to change the program logic such that it does not branch to any non-executable BASIC statement. The "REMARKS" take up part of the "64K" that BASIC runs in, since they are stored exactly as seen on the screen, not in any tokenized form. Also not branching to "REMARKS" will allow the compress option to remove the statement from the output compressed file. The BASIC compiler maintains a link list of line numbers. If you do any type of "ON ERROR" checking in your BASIC program, each line number , under these conditions , results in 4 or more bytes being used in the ".OBJ" (object) file created by the compiler.You could see why compressing the production version of the program could result in memory and speed savings.A link list must be searched and if your program was 500 lines, then (500 * (4+)) bytes must be used just to maintain the line number list. Also if you run into the old "0 BYTES REMAINING" message, compressing with the option to remove unreferenced line numbers (especially with /E/X options) results in a large savings, such that many times you can write a large program.. ************************************************************************** MACHINE REQUIREMENTS: 256K MINIMUM --------------------- BASIC 2.1+ MS/IBM BASIC Compiler 2.0 MONOCHROME/CGA COLOR DISPLAY DISK DRIVE [REAL AND/OR VIRTUAL(RAM)] EPSON PRINTER (OPTIONAL) RUNNING THE PROGRAM: -------------------- From the DOS prompt type in > BASICAID [optional parameters (see below)] ************* BASIC COMPILER 2.0 SUPPORT ************** COMMAND LINE RUNTIME OPTIONS: >BASICAID [OPTION,OPTION] ;The [] indicates that options are not required, you do not enter the '[]'. ;any option that is correctly entered will be processed and you will not be prompted during program execution. This allows a batch file with symbolic parameters! OPTION FUNCTION ------- --------------------------------------------- FILENAME=path\filename This is the basic program to be processed, now full DOS path syntax is supported. OPTION=a-number For 'a-number', substitute a value of 1 to 5, as appears on opening menu. TEMPDISK=drive Specify the drive that the expanded file is to be created on. COMPDISK=drive Specify the drive that the compressed file is to be created on. SORTDISK=drive Specify the drive that the temporary line number cross-reference file is to be created on. LIST=YES/NO Print a listing corresponding to function being performed. Used during 'compress' or 'expand' option. REMOVE=YES/NO Remove unreferenced line numbers from the compressed program. note: basic compiler '/n' option required if this option selected. SHOW=YES/NO Display line number being processed. Tests show that screen i/o is Basics slowest function, about 25% decrease. NOBEEP=any-char. Turn off most all whistles and beeps during processing. Added for quiet office, remote and batch unattended processing. ABORT=YES/NO If any error condition, exit immediately to DOS or give operator chance to recover from error. NOTE: 1). 'drive' is any valid DOS drive letter 2). for a `YES/NO' reply, only the first letter is checked. 3). only valid options are scanned for on the command line. 4). options are validated during processing, an invalid option forces the program to get a valid reply from the keyboard operator. 5). if the program was invoked with command line options, program will process without waiting for any replies,even 'press enter to continue' prompts. This will allow complete unattended batch operations. 6). command line converted to all upper-case prior to scanning for keywords. 7). 'keywords' immediately followed by '='. 8). all 'keywords' separate by ','. ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: -------------------- The printed cross reference listing may be redirected to a disk file. This way you can have a permanent cross reference file of the basic program. *** note: The cross reference disk file option is only available to registered users. *** note: With the unregistered Shareware version there is a restriction on the number of references that the program can maintain. This is sufficient for most small-to-medium sized Basic source programs. This conversion and rewrite of BASICAID to QUICK BASIC 2.00 was a time consuming effort. Every effort was made to provide a common and more 'user friendly' program interface. Error handling and recover was enhanced to better serve you, the user. The final product hopefully reflects our efforts to provide you with a 'fine quality tool' to use to increase your productivity. However, as with any major effort, our testing cannot be exhaustive enough, as we would want, to provide a 100% error free product. We welcome your comments, complaints and suggestions as to what is wrong, right or could be better. Again thanks and enjoy. *************************************************************************** IN CLOSING ---------- See the registration form at the end of this documentation, if you want to become a registered user of the 'full featured' version of this product. THIS IS A PRODUCT of DOWNLINK SYSTEMS INC and A $25 CONTRIBUTION IS ASKED BUT IS NOT REQUIRED..PLEASE PASS THE PROGRAM ON IN ITS UNMODIFIED VERSION ONLY. WE HOPE THIS LITTLE CONTRIBUTION WILL HELP YOU. Appendix A - Ordering ORDER FORM Check which items you wish to purchase: (_) Noncommercial license for the use of BASICAID. (_) Commercial license for the use of BASICAID on __ computers. (_) Program update subscription service (not more than five updates, does not include trivial changes), $35/year. (_) Payment of $_____ is enclosed (check or money order). Signature: ________________________________ _______________________________________________ Name _______________________________________________ _______________________________________________ Address ______________________ ________ ____________ City State Zip Send this completed form to: Downlink Systems Inc. c/o D. Conner 1377 K STREET N.W. SUITE 189 WASHINGTON D.C. 20005 For program disk orders outside the U.S., please add an additional $5, and enclose an international money order payable in U.S. currency. ======================== end of documentation ==============================