ANSI Standard BASIC

More informally known as ANSI Full BASIC, this is the long-but-no-so-awaited specification ANSI and ECMA came up with many years after the X3J2 committee was formed to define what BASIC would officially be like.

Where it is/was used

Noteworthy characteristics

Environment and usage

Extensions

Curiosities

The Bywater BASIC manual/README file says: "The ANSI Standard for full BASIC does not specify which particular commands or functions must be implemented, and in fact the standard is very robust. Perhaps no implementation of BASIC would ever include all of the items"¹⁾.

Related to...

Influenced by

Influence for

• TrueBASIC - by Kemeny and Kurtz, probably the first admitted attempt to create an implementation according to the standard (or part of it at least)
• Microsoft QuickBASIC - probably in order to be able to sell its BASIC to government agencies, Microsoft also had a look at the ANSI standard and took some ideas from it for its highly sucessfull second-generation, structured BASIC
• Decimal BASIC - a 21st-century open-source, multiplatform IDE/interpreter which strives to follow the standard

Versions and successors

References

• The ANSI 3.113-1987 Standard BASIC specification, in PDF format, from January 1987. Tough reading, 364 pages.
• The ECMA-116 European counterpart of the specification, in PDF format, encomprising its sections BASIC-1, BASIC-2 and ECMA Graphics Module, from June 1986