In the GE-225 and GE-235, this meant a precision of about 30 bits (roughly ten digits) with an base 2 exponent range of -256 to +255. That isĪll arithmetic was done in floating point. There is one anomoly: a leading minus sign is treated as unary, and has higher precedence that exponentiation, which is contrary to the usual practive.

(a - b - c) is understood to be the same as ((a - b) - c) Left-association is used for multiple operations within a group. Normal precedence rules are used: Exponentiation, multiply and divide, add and subtract. Arithmetic Expressionsīesides the four standard arithmetic operations, BASIC includes raising-to-the-power, the symbol of which is “^”. In addition, the slightly more recent version of BASIC that we are using includes the INPUT statement. RETURN Returns from the end of the subroutineĭEF Introduces programmer-defined functions GOTO Does just that, transfers to another line-numbered statement READ Assigns values to variables from internal data LET Introduces the assignment statement, and is required There were fifteen statement types in the original BASIC. This note gives an outline of the language for those of you familiar with programming.

This document is reproduced courtesy of Thomas Kurtz The Original-Original Versionĭartmouth BASIC revolutionized computer programming for the non-experts, who greatly outnumber the experts! It was a simple language, used English words, and gave almost instantaneous response in the days when turnarounds of hours or even days was the norm.

Gw basic nested loop programs