Curious. BASIC to HTML

[richard]

Anyone ever tried writing a program using BASIC to write HTML?
With Liberty Basic able to function while Windows is operating, with a lot
more stuff than the old BASIC, I was thinking that in some cases, doing so
might be interesting.
Since HTML is basically text, one could write a program that would do all
the tags and attributes for you.

 

[David Dorward]

Anyone ever tried writing a program using BASIC to write HTML?

Since most ASP pages are written in VBScript - many people have.

 

[mbstevens]

Anyone ever tried writing a program using BASIC to write HTML?
With Liberty Basic able to function while Windows is operating, with a
lot more stuff than the old BASIC, I was thinking that in some cases,
doing so might be interesting.
Since HTML is basically text, one could write a program that would do
all the tags and attributes for you.

Suggest you download a free copy of Perl, Python, or Ruby for that kind
of thing:
http://www.activestate.com/

These languages are better suited for text manipulation, and have a good
track record for creating HTML pages on the fly. You will also want a
language with regular expressions built in or in modules.

Plus, Basic encourages spaghetti code. Any program of reasonable size
becomes hard to understand. If you are an absolute beginner I suggest
Python.

 

[richard]

Since most ASP pages are written in VBScript - many people have.

True. But I'm not talking about the higher VBscript language. As that is
something entirely different.

 

[rwap]

of thing:http://www.activestate.com/

These languages are better suited for text manipulation, and have a good
track record for creating HTML pages on the fly. You will also want a
language with regular expressions built in or in modules.

The beauty is that there are plenty of ready made libraries for these
languages, which include HTML generation and parsing, especially for
Perl.

Plus, Basic encourages spaghetti code. Any program of reasonable size
becomes hard to understand. If you are an absolute beginner I suggest
Python.

It depends on the implementation of BASIC - I recall such a program
being released for the Sinclair QL (which is still a good machine even
as an emulator!!) - at least SuperBASIC (as provided on the humble
Sinclair QL) allows you to create user defined functions and
procedures, which gets away from spaghetti code as it tends to lead to
more structured BASIC.

Rich Mellor
www.internetbusinessangels.com

 

[Richard]

True. But I'm not talking about the higher VBscript language. As that
is something entirely different.

So what are you talking about?

You want to use an even crappier BASIC to do the job which is done
admirably by VBScript, Python, PERL and PHP already? Why?

 

[mbstevens]

It depends on the implementation of BASIC - I recall such a program
being released for the Sinclair QL (which is still a good machine even
as an emulator!!) - at least SuperBASIC (as provided on the humble
Sinclair QL) allows you to create user defined functions and
procedures, which gets away from spaghetti code as it tends to lead to
more structured BASIC.

And the old Kaypros came with S-Basic. But those kinds of things are
basic in name only. S-Basic was actually more closely related to C. I
looked at the website of the version the op was talking about, and did
not see anything (on a cursory look) that made me think it was structured.

 

[richard]

Suggest you download a free copy of Perl, Python, or Ruby for that kind of
thing:
http://www.activestate.com/

These languages are better suited for text manipulation, and have a good
track record for creating HTML pages on the fly. You will also want a
language with regular expressions built in or in modules.

Plus, Basic encourages spaghetti code. Any program of reasonable size
becomes hard to understand. If you are an absolute beginner I suggest
Python.

Liberty Basic while based on the original, also now includes many functions
and capabilities not found in the original.
It is being developed to be compatible with current internet usage and
computers.

 

[mbstevens]

Liberty Basic while based on the original, also now includes many
functions and capabilities not found in the original.
It is being developed to be compatible with current internet usage and
computers.

Does that mean that it discourages gotos, has objects classes and
inheritance or at _least_ is a structured language, and that it has
regular expressions and runs on *Nix as well as Windows and Apple?

 

[Toby Inkster]

Anyone ever tried writing a program using BASIC to write HTML?

Yep -- I've written CGI using QBASIC before. Indeed it was one of my first
attempts at CGI. Don't think I still have it anywhere though. :-(