QBasic
Appeared in	1991 - 1998
Developer	Microsoft Corporation
OS	MS-DOS, Windows 95, Windows 98
License	MS-EULA
Website	www.microsoft.com

QBasic is an IDE and interpreter for a variant of the BASIC programming language which is based on QuickBasic. Code entered into the IDE is compiled to an intermediate form, and this intermediate form is immediately interpreted on demand within the IDE. This is a screenshot of copyrighted computer software. ... For other uses, see Software developer (disambiguation). ... Microsoft Corporation, (NASDAQ: MSFT, HKSE: 4338) is a multinational computer technology corporation with global annual revenue of US$44. ... An operating system (OS) is the software that manages the sharing of the resources of a computer and provides programmers with an interface used to access those resources. ... Microsofts disk operating system, MS-DOS, was Microsofts implementation of DOS, which was the first popular operating system for the IBM PC, and until recently, was widely used on the PC compatible platform. ... Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. ... Windows 98 (codenamed Memphis) is a graphical operating system released on June 25, 1998 by Microsoft and the successor to Windows 95. ... A software license is a legal agreement which may take the form of a proprietary or gratuitous license as well as a memorandum of contract between a producer and a user of computer software. ... Microsoft Corporation, (NASDAQ: MSFT, HKSE: 4338) is a multinational computer technology corporation with global annual revenue of US$44. ... A software license is a type of proprietary or gratiuitious license as well as a memorandum of contract between a producer and a user of computer software — sometimes called an End User License Agreement (EULA) — that specifies the perimeters of the permission granted by the owner to the... A website (alternatively, Web site or web site) is a collection of Web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that is hosted on one or several Web server(s), usually accessible via the Internet, cell phone or a LAN. A Web page is a document, typically written in HTML... An integrated development environment (IDE), also known as integrated design environment and integrated debugging environment, is a programming environment that has been packaged as an application program,that assists computer programmers in developing software. ... In computer programming, an interpreted language is a programming language whose programs may be executed from source form, by an interpreter. ... BASIC (Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of high-level programming languages. ... Microsoft QuickBASIC (also QB or sometimes, QBasic, which is also a different system) is an Integrated Development Environment (or IDE) and Compiler for the BASIC programming language that was developed by Microsoft. ...

Syntax

Like QuickBASIC, but unlike earlier versions of Microsoft BASIC, QBasic is a structured programming language, supporting constructs such as subroutines and while loops. Line numbers, a concept often associated with BASIC, are supported for compatibility, but are not considered good form, having been replaced by descriptive line labels. QBasic has limited support for user-defined data types (structures), and several primitive types used to contain strings of text or numeric data. Structured programming can be seen as a subset or subdiscipline of procedural programming, one of the major programming paradigms. ... In computer science, a subroutine (function, procedure, or subprogram) is a sequence of code which performs a specific task, as part of a larger program, and is grouped as one, or more, statement blocks; such code is sometimes collected into software libraries. ... In most computer programming languages, a while loop is a control flow statement that allows code to be executed repeatedly based on a given boolean condition. ... In computing, a line number is a way of specifying a point in a file by enumerating each line in the file by a number. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ...

History

QBasic was intended as a replacement for GW-BASIC. Version 1.0 was shipped together with MS-DOS 5.0 and higher, as well as Windows 95, Windows NT 3.x, and Windows NT 4.0. IBM recompiled QBasic and included it in PCDOS 5.x, as well as OS/2 2.0 onwards. eComStation, decended from OS/2 code, includes QBasic 1.0. QBasic 1.1 is included with MS-DOS 6.x, and, without EDIT, in Windows 95, and Windows 98. Starting with Windows 2000, Microsoft no longer includes QBasic with their operating systems. GW-BASIC 3. ... Microsofts disk operating system, MS-DOS, was Microsofts implementation of DOS, which was the first popular operating system for the IBM PC, and until recently, was widely used on the PC compatible platform. ... Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. ... Windows NT 3. ... Windows NT 4. ... For other uses, see IBM (disambiguation) and Big Blue. ... IBM PC-DOS was one of the three major operating systems that dominated the personal computer market from about 1985 to 1995. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... eComStation is a PC operating system based on OS/2, published by Serenity Systems International, USA. It includes several additions and accompanying software. ... Windows 98 (codenamed Memphis) is a graphical operating system released on June 25, 1998 by Microsoft and the successor to Windows 95. ... Windows 2000 (also referred to as Win2K) is a preemptive, interruptible, graphical and business-oriented operating system designed to work with either uniprocessor or symmetric multi-processor computers. ...

It was based on the earlier QuickBASIC 4.5 compiler but without QuickBASIC's compiler and linker elements. Until MS-DOS 7, the MS-DOS editor required QBasic. The "edit.com" program simply started QBasic in editor mode only. Microsoft QuickBASIC 4. ... The MS-DOS edit interface (version 1. ...

Although QBasic (along with the built-in MS-DOS Editor) was first introduced as part of the MS-DOS 5.0 Package, it did not depend specifically on MS-DOS 5.0 to run. QBASIC (and the Editor) could be used with previous versions of DOS, down to at least version 3.20. However, sufficient memory and a reasonably fast CPU were still needed, otherwise the program would run very slowly.

For its time, QBasic provided a state-of-the-art IDE, including a debugger with features such as on-the-fly expression evaluation and code modification that were still relatively unusual more than ten years later. A debugger is a computer program that is used to test and debug other programs. ...

QBasic is able to be run natively under nearly all versions of DOS and of Windows, and by using the free DOSBox emulator, it can run on platforms such as Linux and FreeBSD. DOS Version of Z running in DOSBox in Debian. ... This article is about operating systems that use the Linux kernel. ... FreeBSD is a Unix-like free operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) branch through the 386BSD and 4. ...

QBasic came complete with a couple of pre-written example programs. These were Nibbles (a variant of the Snake game), Gorillas, an explosive-banana throwing game derived from Artillery Game first produced on the Tektronix 4051 and later HP 2640 HP 2647 and RemLine, a GW-BASIC code line number removing program. Nibbles is a simple video game and variant of the similar video game Snake, which is often played on todays mobile phones. ... Snake is a video game that came out in the mid-to-late 1970s. ... Gorillas is a video game distributed with MS-DOS 5, Windows 3. ... The Tektronix 405x series was a series of graphics microcomputers produced by Tektronix in the late 1970s through the early 1980s. ... The HP2640 and other HP264X models were block-mode smart and intelligent terminals produced by Hewlett Packard using the new 8080 processor. ...

"Hello, World!" Example

 PRINT "Hello, World!" 

A hello world program is a computer program that prints out Hello, world! on a display device. ...

Trivia

QBasic has a little known easter egg. To see it, press and hold LeftCtrl+LeftShift+LeftAlt and RightCtrl+RightShift+RightAlt simultaneously after running QBasic at the DOS prompt but before the title screen loads: this lists The Team of programmers. Note that on modern computers, it is much too fast to perform. It is best done on an old PC (preferably one with a working Turbo button, with the switch on to slow the CPU to 4.77 MHz) or in an emulator like Bochs or DOSBox which can be slowed down. A virtual Easter egg is a hidden message or feature in an object such as a movie, book, CD, DVD, computer program, or video game. ... Turbo button generally refers to a button (control) on a piece of electonic equipment, which makes the equipment run faster in some way. ... Bochs for Windows displaying HAL91 (Linux) Bochs is a portable open source x86 and AMD64 PCs emulator mostly written in C++ and distributed under GNU Lesser General Public License. ... DOS Version of Z running in DOSBox in Debian. ...

See also

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of

QBasic

• FreeBASIC
• True Basic
• Visual Basic
• PowerBASIC

Image File history File links Wikibooks-logo-en. ... Wikibooks logo Wikibooks, previously called Wikimedia Free Textbook Project and Wikimedia-Textbooks, is a wiki for the creation of books. ... FreeBASIC is a free/open source (GPL), 32-bit BASIC compiler for Microsoft Windows, protected-mode DOS (DOS extender), Linux, and XBox. ... True BASIC is a variant of the BASIC programming language descended from Dartmouth BASIC – the original BASIC – invented by college professors John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz. ... This article is about the Visual Basic language shipping with Microsoft Visual Studio 6. ... PowerBASIC is a compiler suite that compiles a dialect of the BASIC programming language with a syntax similar to that of GW Basic, QBasic, QuickBasic, PDS7 (Microsoft BASIC Professional Development System or QBX), and Turbo Basic. ...

External Links

• Download QBASIC 1.1 from Microsoft
• The QBasic Forum Community