Pi Shack BASIC

*NOTE*: Please allow 1 business day for download link to be emailed.

Pi Shack BASIC (psBASIC) is a dynamic and interactive environment similar to those found on the PCs that started the industry. It has a classic dialect with many enhancements to make it more productive in a Linux environment and to give you access to modern capabilities.

Some of the enhancements are:

• Access to GPIO pins.
• Access to serial ports: I2C, SPI & UARTs.
• Works directly with block devices (32bit limits apply on 32bit architectures).
• BASIC programs can return an exit code, like other languages.
• External programs can be launched and their exit codes received.
• External programs can be opened, like files, for reading or writing.
• A DELIMIT command for reading and writing different kinds of ASCII data tables (comma, colon, space, tab, ... with definable enclosures, escapes and separator combining).
• WHILE and UNTIL, pre and post test and infinite loops (GOTO not required).
• ANSI BASIC extensions: SUB, FUNCTION, SELECT CASE, long IFs.
• Supports the UNIX "shebang" syntax for execution without specifying the interpreter on the command line.
• Work with directory data: crawl files and read attributes.
• Matrix math and generic array manipulations.
• Command line arguments.
• Manipulate environment variables.
• Works well in a shell pipe-line.
• Line numbers are optional!

It is a fully interactive environment that makes it easy to ask "what ifs", develop ideas and interact with things in real-time. With the ability to read from, write to and execute other processes its a very agile automation tool. At the same time it can also work in a pipe-line and signal success or failure.

psBASIC comes with a complete on-line reference manual available via the "HELP" command. With your purchase you also get the reference manual in HTML as a more convenient refernce. "HELP" can be configured to use your browser instead of its terminal based output. This is useful in GUI environments for hyper-linked reading and having the help open in a separate window.

The download package contains two PDF versions of the manual. One has an offset margin for punching and putting in a binder while the other has consistent margins on all pages. These are provided for printing convenience.

You can get more information and try the free version at the Pi Shack page. A blog of examples can also be found on the Pi Shack.