The HP3000 in 1972 Although BASIC/V was developed 30 years ago, it remains an excellent development language for IMAGE database applications on the HP3000. And now it's free. Even after 30 years, as you can see in the table below, BASIC/V can still hold its own against the most "modern" of languages in a CPU-intensive sieving task. The following data was presented at the HP World 2000 show in Philadephia recently: Language Iterations /sec _______________________ sh.hpbin. sys script 0.01 CI.PUB.SYS commandfile 0.10 Cognos Powerhouse 1.00 MPEX 1.09 Perl 1.20 BASIC/V Interpreted 1.64 Speedware 2.61 java classic no jit 12.00 java hotspot Xint 21.00 gcc unoptimized 106.00 Pascal(CM) 119.33 Pascal(NM) (unopt) 130.10 Pascal(NM) (opt lvl 1) 155.50 c89 unopt 158.00 COBOL(NM) (unopt) 167.00 COBOL(NM) (opt lvl 1) 182.00 java classic jit 194.00 SPL(CM) 197.63 BASIC/V(CM) (compiled) 199.60 java hotspot xmixed 288.00 BASIC/V(est) (compiled, octcomped) ~300.00 PASCAL(NM) (opt lvl 2) 379.90 gcc -O3 640.00 gcc -O3 funroll loops 667.00 c89 opt 702.00 Source: Mike Yawn, HP Do not think of "old" as being passe. Rather, because of the era of slow processors and small machines in which BASIC was developed, there are significant advantages to the use BASIC. BASIC/V is: Philosophically Simple Extremely Efficient Very Fast to Execute Very Stable, in the sense that BASIC/V code will run on every version of MPE without concern as to the specific features of the current release. Further, BASIC/V contains its own internal full-screen editor. And every line of input is syntax-checked as it is entered. Both attributes provide the best, most productive elements of the most modern IDE's (integrated development environments), and they've always been there.

BASIC/V A simple, rapid applications development language for the HP3000 Because BASIC/V is now a shared source program, BASIC/V is freely available to all HP3000 users, without any further licensing restrictions. You may freely obtain the two necessary files, BASIC and BASICOMP, here: BASIC BASICOMP Download the two files and FTP them to the PUB.SYS group of your HP3000. Make sure you use binary transfer with your FTP. That's it. You're now ready to use BASIC. The BASIC/V Manuals The following manuals were scanned in as 300dpi, image-only (non-searchable) PDF files. If you wish to recreate the exact look and feel of the original manuals, print the following PDF files using a duplex printer filled with 8.5 x 11" paper. To insure that the manuals print at the correct size, be sure that the checkbox "shrink to fit" is not set in your Adobe Acrobat reader (European users, on the other hand, may need to check the box in order to print the material on their papers). The original manuals were punched for both 3-hole and 2-hole binders. You can see traces of the hole punches in the images you will download. If you print the output in duplex and use a standard 3-hole punch, you will quite faithfully recreate the look of the original manuals. Some pages are blank in the manuals. These are not mistakes. Before the advent of computer-based typesetting, inserted pages were quite common. These blank pages were purposefully left in these scans simply to keep the left-right pagination of the manuals properly aligned. BASIC Interpreter Reference Manual Table of Contents (390K) I: Introduction to BASIC (670K) II: Essentials of BASIC (2.9M) III: Arrays (865K) IV: Variable Types (556K) V: Strings (1.1M) VI: User-Defined Functions (589K) VII: Debugging (941K) VIII: Files (1.9M) IX: Formatted Output (936K) X: Segmentation (727K) XI: Communication with non-BASIC Programs (582K) XII: Non-Interactive Programs (431K) Appendices (2.4M) BASIC/3000 Compiler Reference Manual BASIC/3000 Compiler (1.6M) Selected BASIC-relevant material from the 1979 IMAGE Data Base Managment System Reference Manual IMAGE DBMS (3.4M) BASIC/V Pocket Guide Pocket Guide (1.0M)

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