BBC BASIC for Windows
General >> Announcements >> BBC BASIC for Windows version 5.90a released
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BBC BASIC for Windows version 5.90a released
Post by admin on Jan 1^st, 2009, 7:10pm

I'm pleased to announce the release of BBC BASIC for Windows version 5.90a. This is a 'final' release to tidy up a few loose ends and to add a couple of new features:

1. The interpreter runs up to 20% faster* than version 5.80a.

2. Native support for multilingual (Unicode) text is provided.

3. New 'system variables' @tmp$, @usr$ and @vdu{} are introduced.

4. OPENIN, OPENOUT and OPENUP display a file selector if a wildcard character appears anywhere in the file specification.

5. The cruncher reports an error if it finds ENDCASE, ENDIF, OTHERWISE or WHEN not at the very start of a program line.

6. The TAB key in the program editor can be programmed to execute a keyboard macro.

7. The Utilities menu can be customised to run 'addon' utilities.

To upgrade your copy of BBC BASIC for Windows to version 5.90a download and install UPGRADE.EXE from here (it's free):

http://www.rtrussell.co.uk/bbcwin/download.html

Barring any reports of significant bugs, I expect this to be the last ever release of the BBC BASIC for Windows interpreter.

Richard.

* Measured using a 'compiled' Sieve of Eratosthenes benchmark running on a Pentium 4 CPU. The speed increase on other processor types may be significantly less.

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