thinkyhead

I've updated all my PRs over on the GitHub repo. They fix up various things, mostly cosmetic, and provide smaller and easier-to-validate changes instead of trying to post my entire cleanup effort at once. The source code can be simplified and reduced in size a lot, so that is my focus on the first pass. For the second pass, it seems worthwhile to refactor the code into C++ with STL, as STL can simplify a lot of things, such as working with strings and data structures. I understand there are some other bAtari-BASIC implementations floating around out there, at least one built in (or converted to) Javascript. And maybe the Rust gurus out there will want to take a stab at it someday…. The coolest part about having a Javascript implementation will be to see the bAtari-BASIC source code in one edit field, and the resulting ASM code showing up in real-time in the other field. Combined with a 6502 compiler and a web-based Stella… It will be a much more immediate and fun way to work with this language. And, more nerds playing with this platform might generate some interest in making new and better kernels. As always, I hope my contributions are useful to someone, and I'll continue to submit improvements as time allows. Cheers!

Incidentally, what is your preferred indentation? For C/C++ I've tended to favor 2 spaces instead of tabs since it doesn't fly off the right, GitHub displays it correctly, and editor settings don't matter. However, for the PR I went with the most traditional: 4-column wide Tabs since that seemed to fit the existing code best (although it had a mixture of tabs and spaces).

This is good news! I've submitted a Pull Request with several changes that come from a cleanup I did a while ago and posted on GitHub. The PR I submitted contains many of those changes. It modifies the code to use consistent indentation and adds some extra functions and macros that make the code more concise and the formatting of the 6502 Assembler output fully consistent. Rather than just paste my updated code over the current code I applied the changes manually so they are up to date with any changes since "version 1.0" of bAtariBASIC. I'll follow up periodically with more fixups, and I will also produce a C++ version as part of the refactoring effort. I've also started writing VSCode extensions (i.e., "Auto Build Marlin") and it would be interesting to write a Javascript version of the compiler that could be integrated into Atari Dev Studio. Just the part that produces the Assembler output so you can quickly verify that it's what you expect. And then the extension could do other tricks like highlight lines that it can't figure out how to compile, and so on. From my bAtariBASIC page on GitHub: