Where is the Basic, in Visual Basic?

[Joacim Andersson]

Yes, I wrote everything with the exception of the syntax highlighting edit box. Actually the parsing for a BAT style program is so simple, each line starts with a command (or a colon for a label or comment) it can't start with anything else. You don't have assignment in the same manner as you do in "real" programming languages. With the exception of the IF statement and the FOR loop each line is a complete statement.

I've written much more complex compilers than this. ScriptBrix for example use a VB-like language, allow you to create classes and instanciate objects and so on. This in comparison was a piece of cake and only took me about two days to write (with the exception of the help documentation).

[Niya]

Two days!! I am thoroughly impressed. I've dabbled in something similar in the past. I wrote a parser that deciphers a type of definition language that describes entities in a game and man it took some effort. Writer a proper parser is nothing trivial in my experience but then again I did it in VB6 which doesn't have all the string processing bells and whistles that VB.Net, or some C++ string library or class has.

[Joacim Andersson]

BatchBrix is written in Delphi 2010. The reason for that choice is because the BatchBrix compiler should be able to create EXE files without any dependencies on any other run-time libraries, such as the .Net libraries or the VB6 runtime. BatchBrix also just handles about 40 commands itself, the rest it simply direct to Windows command prompt interpretor, cmd.exe. Most of these commands are very simple to parse, the ones that are a bit more advanced is the FOR loop and the IF ... ELSE statement. Of course it must also parse out where all labels are for any GOTO or GOSUB call and then the following RETURN statement (yes BatchBrix supports GOSUB and RETURN). It also has its own variable stack apart from the Environment variables. So it must be able to parse out the values of variables, both those created by you in the script and the predefined ones that already exists (such as variables for the current directory, variables for the caret position and various named color constants).

[Niya]

I've always dreamed of doing something like this....my own scripting language. This is really good stuff. I'm curious, does Delphi expose its compiler in a similar manner as CodeDOM does in VB.Net ? You stated you needed BatchBrix's EXEs to be dependency free.

[Joacim Andersson]

No, Delphi does not expose its compiler but Delphi doesn't need dependencies. If I would have written my compiler in .Net I would still need the .Net framework for my compiled app.

[Niya]

Hmmm this is rather interesting. I'm trying to imagine how your compiler works....If you're not using an exposed Delphi compiler then I can only conclude that you wrote your very own native code generator or at least some kind of byte code compiler along with an interpreter. Either way, that is quite an accomplishment. The PE header itself is not all that complicated but I'm pretty sure writing an EXE takes some in-depth technical knowledge. You'd have to know some assembly at least. I remember reading up on that once and they went into all kinds talk about data segments and code segments and a whole lot of other low level technical stuff.

[Joacim Andersson]

It is an interesting subject but I guess we don't have to fill up this thread with it. I only throw BatchBrix in there since there was a discussion about batch programming.

[ThEiMp]

This in comparison was a piece of cake and only took me about two days to write (with the exception of the help documentation).

Please Note: It took me about four years to write Visual Suite SX and that it was only one Edition an then it still isn't so complete, that I can only release the Shareware Version of it over the Intenet. You as a programmer, totally rock!!

Also that my Application, is a Visual Basic Source Code Editor, which makes it own source code data, then writes and then saves to the disk the document file, as Visual Basic code. Therefore my language is essentually a Code Editor. Then however the application is able to generate it's own source code, using a special techqine that was developed by me, at my computer programming firm. Then one that I am not going to mention, because I want to remain totally aniominous, and that is what it shall stay at. However the Help Documentation that I have been writing for the Application, only took about five days to write because as said before in this Thread, it is essentually a Visual Basic Source Code Editor, and nothing more...