ansi:
ANSI BASIC
Keywords
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The infamous, late and mostly failed attempt to create an official, worldwide specification for BASICs. Only its smallest, ultra-limited and already dated Minimal BASIC portion was somehow implemented (mostly because it already had been). In fact, the Standard BASIC specification has some conflicts with the Minimal spec — and that's why both are treated here in different pages, not in a subset- or extension- relationship; and also why this page is out of standard.
Versions and successors
Okay, so here are the ANSI BASICs, and official specification documents are available from each one's page:
Noteworthy differences
- Minimal BASIC defined 26 keywords and 11 functions. Standard BASIC defined 176 keywords and 52 functions.
- Minimal BASIC programs should have lines numbered from 0 to 9999. Standard BASIC would accept 50000 lines of code, but would not allow line number 0.
- LET was optional in Minimal BASIC, as in many other real-life BASICs before it. In Full BASIC it became mandatory.
- Full BASIC defined
!as an abbreviation for the REM comments keyword. Minimal BASIC did not define an abbreviation, but the much more common apostrophe had been adopted by 1970's Dartmouth Fifth Edition.