Liberty BASIC v5.0 prealpha release for Mac OS X
Copyright 1992-2005 Shoptalk Systems, all rights reserved
http://www.libertybasic.com

NOTE: Do not redistribute.  Do not place on download sites or include in
CDROM compilations.  You may post a link to our download page at 
http://www.libertybasic.com/download.html

Primary internet resources for Liberty BASIC:

  http://www.libertybasic.com
  http://groups.yahoo.com/libertybasic.com
  http://libertybasic.conforums.com
  http://www.libertybasicuniversity.com/lbnews

Introduction

Liberty BASIC is a version of the BASIC programming language.  Since 1992 
Liberty BASIC has only been available for the Windows operating system.  
This prealpha is meant as a demonstrator for those who have been waiting to
see our work on this port.  This release is free, and support is limited to
the MAC OS X forum on our Conforums board here:

  http://libertybasic.conforums.com/index.cgi?board=lb4osx

NO GUI:  At this time, Liberty BASIC for Mac OS X has no IDE or support for
GUI application development.  It is a console only BASIC, and works with
stdin and stdout.  Source code is compiled in memory and then executed.
This makes it suitable for many everyday things like scripting and CGI
programming.  If you are interested in GUI development or if you need an
integrated editor and debugger, these things will come later, or you can
try our Windows version.

Release schedule:  We have not scheduled a release date yet, but we intend
to release new versions of this Mac OS X port every few weeks.  We also
intend to release a port to Linux in the near future.

Technical details:  This software takes the form of a command line
interpreter.  It is actually an in-memory compiler and runtime environment.
When you invoke Liberty BASIC from the command line it will compile the
specified program in memory and then execute it.  If there are any compile
errors it will stop and indicate with a line number and the text of the
bad program line.  Once the compile is successful it will begin execution,
and if there are any runtime errors it will stop with an indication of the
error.

Floating point: This release supports only single precision floats, but we
will support double precision in a future release.

NOTE: Some computers report an mprotect: Permission denied error when 
starting Liberty BASIC.  This does not stop Liberty BASIC from running.  
We are trying to track this down.  Please send us email telling us if you
see this error or not, and what version of Mac OS X you are running.   This
will help us to track down the problem.

To use:

-open a terminal session (go to the applications folder and then utilities) 
-cd to the folder where you have unzipped Liberty BASIC
-type lb5run progname.bas where progname.bas is the name of the program you
  want to run

  for example:

      lb5run hilo.bas

There are several simple example.bas programs included, including a small
test suite called tests.bas we used to verify the basic functionality for
this release.

Note:  If the current directory . is not part of your terminal session's
path, you may need to include it in the command line you type in, like so:

      ./lb5run hilo.bas

To see the product information when running Liberty BASIC, include the 
-lbverbose switch, like so:

      lb5run hilo.bas -lbverbose

The -lbverbose switch will cause the following information to appear when
lb5run is started.

      Liberty BASIC 5.0 prealpha for Mac OS X
      Copyright 1992-2005 Shoptalk Systems, all rights reserved.

The files:  Liberty BASIC for Mac OS X consists of two files lb5run and
lb5run.im.  These are both required.  Together these files are about 6.5MB.
We expect them to get somewhat smaller as development nears maturity.  The
final product will include a distribution mechanism that does not require
program source code to be included in the delivery.

The following is a list of functions and statements that are included in
this non GUI version of Liberty BASIC.  For details about these (and more)
visit this URL:

  http://www.libertybasicuniversity.com/lb4help/Command_Reference_A-C.htm

Of course at this stage of development expect some bugs.  Please report
anything you find to

  http://libertybasic.conforums.com/index.cgi?board=lb4osx

Supported functions:

        CHR$
        MID$
        LEFT$
        RIGHT$
        ASC
        VAL
        LEN
        STR$
        TIME$
        DATE$
        WORD$
        TRIM$
        INSTR
        ABS
        INT
        EOF
        INPUT$
        RND
        USING
        SIN
        COS
        TAN
        ATN
        ACS
        ASN
        LOG
        EXP
        LOF
        UPPER$
        LOWER$
        MKDIR
        RMDIR
        NOT
        HEXDEC
        SPACE$
        DECHEX$
        MIN
        MAX
        INPUTTO$
        SQR
        LOC
        TAB - compiles, but adds no formatting spaces in this release
        EVAL$
        EVAL

Supported statements:

        PRINT - using commas to tabulate is ineffective in this release
        INPUT
        LINE INPUT
        LET
        FOR NEXT
        DIM
        REM or '
        IF THEN ELSE END IF
        GOTO GOSUB RETURN
        WHILE WEND
        OPEN CLOSE
        CLS
        END
        STOP
        FIELD 
        PUT GET GETTRIM
        SORT 
        FILES
        KILL
        NAME
        REDIM
        FUNCTION
        CALL
        SUB
        READ DATA RESTORE
        SELECT CASE
        EXIT
        SEEK
        RANDOMIZE 
        DO LOOP
        GLOBAL
        ON ERROR

Enjoy!

-Carl Gundel, author of Liberty BASIC
carlg@libertybasic.com