BASIC Compiler

[gregtaylor]

I vaguely remembe that one of the compilers was written in SuperBASIC and then compiled itself. I think it was Supercharge but can anyone confirm?

Greg

[tofro]

BASICally (pun intended), all of them were written in SuperBASIC: SuperCharge, QLiberator and Turbo.
The source code for Turbo is available, QLiberator source code is currently under investigation through de-compilation.
Obviously, all three compilers rely heavily on machine code extensions.

[dilwyn]

In case you'd like to study the sources:

Turbo: https://dilwyn.theqlforum.com/turbo/trbos22.zip
These sources for Turbo were maintained by the late George Gwilt after it stopped being sold by Dig. Precision. Before George got involved, some work had been done on updating the Turbo Toolkit in particular by Mark Knight and David Gilham

QLiberator: https://dilwyn.theqlforum.com/qlib/index.html
Latest is v3.46, further down the page. These are not the original sources, thought to be lost, but as tofro said, decompiled and hand-modified by a few people including Martin Head and Per Witte.

AFAIK, we don't have the sources for SuperCharge, although an 'SE' version of the compiler is available at https://dilwyn.theqlforum.com/turbo/superchargese.zip

[qbits]

hi Dilwyn,

I seem to recall a series in QL World to build a compiler written in SuperBASIC that compiled itself
that might have connections with the background to SuperCharge?

QBITS

[dilwyn]

Do you mean "Inside Turbo And SuperCharge" by Simon N Goodwin?

If so, that's QL World June 1991 page 42.

The only other article I can think of is his Zip compiler in a Spectrum magazine called Your Spectrum (I think).

[Martin_Head]

In case you'd like to study the sources:

AFAIK, we don't have the sources for SuperCharge, although an 'SE' version of the compiler is available at https://dilwyn.theqlforum.com/turbo/superchargese.zip

I did de-compile the 'SE' version back to SuperBASIC. But there did not seem to be much interest in it being released. I don't know if it will actually run or compile itself correctly, as it's a bit of a nightmare to compile itself. It has to be done in QDOS, and if SuperBASIC moves (as it tends to) it falls over. Because it loses track of where it is.
It is also incredibly slow. It's one of those 'run it all night' programs.

I also have a copy of the original source code from Simon N Goodwin of an American version of one of the versions before V2.0 (The 'SE' one) without the LensLock stuff. But I'm not sure of the copyright state of it.