number formatting

gunn27

Hi. I've a program that does a lot of calculating and i want to output the results to a file for a CNC machine.
I've used print using "###.####" which works fine on numbers greater than 1, but on smaller numbers, there's nothing before the decimal point. e.g. "X .1234"
I need to output the result without spaces and with a zero before the decimal point.
Is there a formatting option that would do this, or will I have to convert it to a string and use string functions to remove the spaces and insert zero?
thanks in advance
p.s. I've editted this post to add that the text in quotes above should have 3 spaces to the left of the point, but is removed when posted ?????

vintzend

Somebody writing real and useful True BASIC programs, that's really nice 👍️ That's what the language is all about, isn't it?

I've glanced over the PRINT USING$ appendix in the manual two times in a row, but could not find the answer to your question (having a leading zero on values < 0).

I really wonder if I missed it two times in a row, or this is a real omission.

gunn27

vintzend
thanks for looking.
I couldn't find anything either, so have written a subroutine to take care of it.
I just thought there may be a string function to do it.
I've been using True Basic for around 30 years, through dos emulators for windows and it's great to find that it's available to run in windows.
I'm thinking of purchasing the gold edition, to see how the GUI and Forms work.

vintzend

I think it's universally agreed that the last DOS versions were considered the best and most stable implementations of the True BASIC environment.

I don't want to bash True BASIC on their official forums (I support the people behind TB fully, I even bought the Gold edition at the old price), but even John Arscott (the most prolific developer using TB that I know), acknowledged the Windows versions had serious issues on the earlier official TB forum.

It depends a bit on what you plan to do with the language, in my opinion. If you really want to create sophisticated GUI applications, you'll surely hit the well known CPU 100% bug, that will probably annoy you. If you mostly do standard BASIC stuff (graphic and text output) and only sometimes use the GUI stuff, you'll generally do fine. Of course being able to create Windows 32-bit EXE files is a plus (that requires Silver) and running programs in a GUI Window has its advantages. I'd also imagine the libraries are better (although judging from the headers, some some look really old, so maybe hardly any changes from the DOS versions!).

I have this Masterminds of Programming book (O'Reilly, 2009, ISBN: 9780596515171), that contains an in-depth interview with Thomas E. Kurtz and he also mentions there that they used to have multiple developers working on the language in the old days and around that time they only had one and that it was difficult to keep developing TB on multiple platforms (probably they offered Windows, classic MacOS 9, they probably already stopped offering Unix versions around that time). So he also seems to acknowledge that they had trouble even back then. This is line in what John Arscott once said, that each new version fixed some bugs and introduced new ones, I assume he mostly meant GUI-related stuff, as I believe the core of the language is generally stable. The company was sold to new owners since, I'm not sure of the current legal status/ownership.

You could consider buying the Bronze version first (6.0 is very much recommended, see below) first. You then get a idea of the language and its limitations. It has some very basic GUI stuff, but it's not documented too well in that version I believe. If you still like what you see, you can then buy the Silver or Gold version and know better what to expect.

I'd recommend to use an open-source editor for editing and then run/compile with TBSYSTEM.EXE separately. I believe this is possible with all offered Windows versions, except Bronze 5.5.

Unfortunately since lowering the prices, there are no upgrade offers anymore. I hope the people behind TB will re-consider this, although, in their defense: the prices have never been this low before.

gunn27

vintzend
thanks for you're insight into the GUI stuff.
I'm a toolmaker by trade and started working on cnc machines in the early 80's, before the advent of affordable CAD-CAM programs, so satrted writing my own programs to do a lot of the calculating for the machines.
Back then, the machines were programmed manually, so I'd print out the co-ordinates and have to type them into the console. Ideal situation for human errors! I think we're all dislexic to a certain extent.
I reme,ber talking to someone who told me that programming was "a bit like tiling a bathroom in the dark. You write some code, turn the lights on, see what's wrong, then turn the lights out and try and put it right."

I've been playing around with the bronze demo over the last week and seem to be getting on ok with it, apart from not being able to save from it.
I've used notepad for writing the programs and saving as .tru files, then loading them into the editor to run.
get's annoying, when I forget that the changes won't save! when I remember, I just copy all the text and then paste into the notepad file.
I didn't even think of looking for a windows version of TB until recently, instead, as previously mentioned, I searched for a Dos emulator.
It'll be great to use the windows version and be able to write stand alone programs.
Hopefully, the new 'owners' will continue with the development.
thanks again for your insight into this and no doubt I'll be back on the forum!

admin

gunn27 Owner here 🙂. We are starting some new development after we put out a couple of more immediate fires - the main thrust will probably be to identify/set up a platform-independent packaging using something like Docker, or enabling easier use with multiple editors/IDEs, but it's early days. I have also heard that the DOS edition was considered the gold standard, so we may see what our options are for enabling people on modern systems to use that core language engine again. John Arscott and I had many discussions around that topic several years ago, and if memory serves, the main barriers center around the hard-coded limitations of memory and character count that were required because... DOS and tiny processors/memory capacity.

Re: v6 for Windows, if you're just curious about FORMS and the GUI builder, you can get the Silver+FORMS edition for lower cost than Gold, but Gold does include all the library source code while Silver does not. If you have any other questions, feel free to give us a shout at sales@truebasic.com.