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QBasic

See:

Basic   

Language type:

S - block-structured

Description:

QBasic, or QuickBasic as it is sometimes called, is a dialect of BASIC created by Microsoft for application development under the DOS 'operating system'.
Microsoft QBasic exhibits a number of differences from traditional Basic:
• line numbers are permitted by not required, and text labels are supported
• QBasic has a better set of control flow constructs than original Basic
• Since it was designed specifically for one platform, specialized graphics and I/O support were built into the language

Later versions of QBasic featured better support for subroutines and extending the language environment with libraries written in C and assembly.
Documentation about QBasic is widely available on the web. Some versions of the language system itself are also available, although the licensing arrangements are unclear.

Origin:

Microsoft Crop., 1986.

See Also:

Basic    Visual Basic    VBA   

Remarks:

QBasic was the replacement for GW-Basic on MS-DOS in the mid-1980s. The first popular version of QBasic was bundled with MS-DOS 3.3 around 1987.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, prior to the release of Visual Basic, the QBasic compiler was widely used for application development on PCs. The last version of QBasic was 4.5; the language is no longer supported by Microsoft. QBasic 1.1 is reputedly available with most Windows95 distributions.

Links:

Tutorials on QBasic

The NeoZone QBasic Site

Big QBasic download site

QBasic Top 20 links list

Date:

Last updated 2/25/98

Sample code:

'*  Locates Find$ in sorted array Array$ () and returns element number or -1   *
'*  by Matt Usner.

FUNCTION BinarySearch% (Array$(), Find$)
    BinarySearch% = -1              ' no matching element yet
    Min = LBOUND(Array$)            ' start at first element
    Max = UBOUND(Array$)            ' consider through last
    DO
       Try = (Max + Min) \ 2        ' start testing in middle
       IF Array$(Try) = Find$ THEN
          BinarySearch% = Try       ' return matching element
          EXIT DO
       END IF
       IF Array$(Try) > Find$ THEN  ' too high, cut in half
          Max = Try - 1
       ELSE
          Min = Try + 1             ' too low, cut other way
       END IF
    LOOP WHILE Max >= Min
    END FUNCTION

Descriptions in this dictionary are ©1997-99 Neal Ziring. Some examples copyright of their respective authors. Some technologies and languages are trademarked. Permission to copy descriptions is granted as long as authorship credit is preserved.

Comments on this dictionary, corrections and suggestions, are all welcome. Please use email, the address is ziring@home.com