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What Ever Happened to QBASIC?

Posted by Cliff on from the replaced-by-its-visual-bretheren dept.

idg101 asks: "I can remember the days when i was 10, programming in QBASIC and checking out all the programs on such sites as this one. There were exciting! Around age 13 i can remember talk of getting an internet interface to work with in your programs. Now, I am 19, and the story has apparently changed. Qbasic.com looks the same as it did many years ago. What happened to QBASIC and its followers?" My guess is that Microsoft has been doing it's best to replace all of the old-school BASIC interpreters with it's Visual Basic...which is all well and good unless all you wanted to do was fiddle with a 10-100 line quickie. So, reiterating idg101's question: are there still lightweight BASIC interpreters still floating around?

2 of 23 comments (clear)

  1. You can still download QBASIC by ajuda · · Score: 4, Informative

    Qbasic can be downloaded here. It's good to know that even some microsoft software is still free.

  2. QBasic still lives.... by os2fan · · Score: 3, Informative
    QBasic is still in Windows NT4, WinNT2K, and all versions of OS/2, is on the Win9x disks under "old MSDOS".

    There are three significant versions of it.

    • Version 1 comes with MSDOS 5.0, Windows NT4. It says it's MSDOS Editor, and does not support the QHELP interface.
    • Version 1.01 comes with PC-DOS 5.0, and all versions of OS/2 since 2.0, this says it's PC-DOS. It does not support the QHELP interface either.
    • Version 1.1 Comes with MS-DOS 6.x, Windows 9x. It supports the QHELP interface.

    Apart from the BASIC interpertor, you can use it as an editor and as a help engine. The edit.com and help.com automatically launch it in these modes, the files are identical, except at the end, one says EDCOM and the other says QHELP. This is handy, because in Win9x, edit.com does not appear. But if you want to make it, you can do it. You can rename edit.com and help.com to anything you like, eg qbedit.com and help6.com. This might be needed if edit and help commands do something differet, as they do in 4DOS.

    • QHELP forces QBASIC to load the file in the help viewer mode, and load HELP.HLP.
    • EDCOM forces QBASIC to load itself as an editor, and access EDIT.HLP as the help file.
    --
    OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.