CBMBASIC(1)

NAME
cbmbasic - port of Commodore 64 BASIC to modern systems

SYNOPSIS

cbmbasic

cbmbasic program.bas

DESCRIPTION

cbmbasic is a 100% compatible version of Commodore's version of Microsoft BASIC 6502 as found on the Commodore 64. You can use it in interactive mode or pass a BASIC file as a command line parameter.

cbmbasic does not emulate 6502 code; all code is completely native. On a 1 GHz CPU you get about 1000x speed compared to a 1 MHz 6502.

There are no command-line options.

USAGE

You can use cbmbasic in interactive mode by just running the binary without parameters, or you can specify an ASCII-encoded BASIC program on the command line. You can also use cbmbasic as a UNIX scripting language by adding a hashbang line to your BASIC program and making it executable:

$ ls -l hello.bas
-rwxr-xr-x  1 mist  staff  40  7 Apr 21:30 hello.bas
$ cat hello.bas
#!/usr/bin/env cbmbasic
PRINT"HELLO WORLD!"
$ ./hello.bas
HELLO WORLD!

cbmbasic implements a small plugin system that lets developers add additional statements, functions etc. Right now, you can turn this on with SYS 1 (turn off with SYS 0) and use the new statements LOCATE y, x (set cursor position), SYSTEM string (run shell command) and the extended WAIT port, mask, which implements the Bill Gates easter egg.

AUTHORS

cbmbasic was ported by Michael Steil and James Abbatiello. The original 6502 version was written by Microsoft.

This man page written for the SlackBuilds.org project by B. Watson, and is licensed under the WTFPL.

SEE ALSO

The cbmbasic homepage: https://github.com/mist64/cbmbasic