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What happened to LIBRARY LOCAL?

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  What happened to LIBRARY LOCAL? "Richard Russell" <news@rtrussell.co.uk> - 2011-04-29 14:44 +0100
    Re: What happened to LIBRARY LOCAL? Matthew Wightman <matthew.wightman@gmail.com> - 2011-04-29 22:32 +0100
      Re: What happened to LIBRARY LOCAL? "Richard Russell" <news@rtrussell.co.uk> - 2011-04-30 10:33 +0100
        Re: What happened to LIBRARY LOCAL? Matthew Wightman <matthew.wightman@gmail.com> - 2011-04-30 11:09 +0100

#255 — What happened to LIBRARY LOCAL?

I've got a document entitled 'Basic V Guide' which evidently originates  
 from Acorn and describes ARM BASIC 5 in some detail; it might even have  
been written by Sophie.  Included in the document is a detailed  
description of a LIBRARY LOCAL statement:

-----------------------------------------------------------------
LIBRARY LOCAL is used to define variables and arrays that will be
private to a library. Only the library will be able to reference
these variables and arrays.

The syntax of the statement is as follows:

         LIBRARY LOCAL <list of variables and arrays>

where <list of variable and arrays> is a list of variable and
array names separated by commas, for example:

         LIBRARY LOCAL abc%, def%, ghi$, jkl(), mno(), pqr$()
-----------------------------------------------------------------

It continues in the same vein for another page or so, with many examples.

I am not aware of any released version of BASIC 5 incorporating this  
statement, but judging by the amount of information in the document the  
implementation must have been worked out in considerable detail.  Does  
anybody know the history behind this?

Richard.
http://www.rtrussell.co.uk/

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#257

On 29/04/2011 14:44, Richard Russell wrote:
> I've got a document entitled 'Basic V Guide' which evidently originates
> from Acorn and describes ARM BASIC 5 in some detail; it might even have
> been written by Sophie. Included in the document is a detailed
> description of a LIBRARY LOCAL statement:
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> LIBRARY LOCAL is used to define variables and arrays that will be
> private to a library. Only the library will be able to reference
> these variables and arrays.
>
> The syntax of the statement is as follows:
>
> LIBRARY LOCAL <list of variables and arrays>
>
> where <list of variable and arrays> is a list of variable and
> array names separated by commas, for example:
>
> LIBRARY LOCAL abc%, def%, ghi$, jkl(), mno(), pqr$()
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>
> It continues in the same vein for another page or so, with many examples.
>
> I am not aware of any released version of BASIC 5 incorporating this
> statement, but judging by the amount of information in the document the
> implementation must have been worked out in considerable detail. Does
> anybody know the history behind this?

As far as I can tell, the document you describe is the Brandy Basic 
"Basic V Guide". It can be found as "basic" in the docs directory of the 
Brandy distribution available on SourceForge 
(http://sourceforge.net/projects/brandy/ ).

IIUC, Brandy does implement the described LIBRARY LOCAL command.

>
> Richard.
> http://www.rtrussell.co.uk/


-- 
Matthew Wightman

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#259

On Fri, 29 Apr 2011 22:32:35 +0100, Matthew Wightman  
<matthew.wightman@gmail.com> wrote:

> As far as I can tell, the document you describe is the Brandy Basic  
> "Basic V Guide". It can be found as "basic" in the docs directory of the  
> Brandy distribution available on SourceForge

Interesting.  There's no mention of Brandy by name in the file.

Are you suggesting that LIBRARY LOCAL was a feature devised specifically  
for Brandy, or that it was originally intended for ARM BASIC but abandoned  
or removed for some reason?

Given that Brandy doesn't in general extend the language (apart from the  
longer strings) it seems somewhat strange to me that this one feature  
would have been added.  If the intention had been to extend BBC BASIC,  
many other (arguably more valuable) additions could have been implemented  
at the same time.

Richard.
http://www.rtrussell.co.uk/

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#260

On 30/04/2011 10:33, Richard Russell wrote:
> On Fri, 29 Apr 2011 22:32:35 +0100, Matthew Wightman
> <matthew.wightman@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> As far as I can tell, the document you describe is the Brandy Basic
>> "Basic V Guide". It can be found as "basic" in the docs directory of
>> the Brandy distribution available on SourceForge
>
> Interesting. There's no mention of Brandy by name in the file.
>
> Are you suggesting that LIBRARY LOCAL was a feature devised specifically
> for Brandy, or that it was originally intended for ARM BASIC but
> abandoned or removed for some reason?

At the time of my previous post, I was guessing. I've now seen
http://www.apdl.co.uk/riscworld/volume1/issue7/brandy/index.htm (An 
article in RISCWorld about Brandy Basic by Dave Daniels) which mentions 
that libraries having private variables is a Brandy extension.

>
> Given that Brandy doesn't in general extend the language (apart from the
> longer strings) it seems somewhat strange to me that this one feature
> would have been added. If the intention had been to extend BBC BASIC,
> many other (arguably more valuable) additions could have been
> implemented at the same time.

Looking through the Brandy documentation, there do seem to be a number 
of other extensions, in addition to the ones mentioned in the article.


-- 
Matthew Wightman

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