(MS-BASIC) A dialect of
BASIC from
Microsoft,
originally developed by
Bill Gates in a garage back in the
CP/M days. It was originally known as GWBasic, then QBASIC
and finally MS-BASIC.
When the
MS-DOS operating system came out, it incorporated
the GWBASIC.EXE or BASICA.EXE interpreters. GWBASIC ("Gee
Whiz") incorporated graphics and a screen editor and was
compatible with earlier BASICs.
QBASIC was more sophisticated. Version 4.5 had a full screen
editor, debugger and compiler. The compiler could also
produce executable files but to run these a utility program
(BRUN44.EXE) had to be present. Thus
source code could be
kept private.
From DOS 5.0 or 6.0 onward, MS-BASIC was standard.
Latest version: 1.1, also produces
stand-alone executables
and can display graphics.
Usenet newsgroup: news:comp.lang.basic.misc.