SmallBASIC

Chris Warren-Smith

About this app

SmallBASIC is a fast and easy to learn BASIC programming language interpreter ideal for everyday calculations, scripts and prototypes. SmallBASIC includes trigonometric, matrices and algebra functions, a powerful string library, system, and graphic commands along with structured programming syntax.

NOTE: This is *not* "Small Basic" from Microsoft. This is the open source GPL version 3 licensed SmallBASIC originally made for the Palm Pilot and later ported to the Franklin eBookman and Nokia 770 devices.

SmallBASIC works well with "Hacker's Keyboard" available separately.

Some of SmallBASIC's features are:

- SmallBASIC is a multi-platform BASIC language: Currently, Linux, Windows and Android are supported.

- The language is pretty compact: The Debian installer for Linux, for example, comes as a single 340 kb file.

- SmallBASIC features a very comprehensive set of mathematical functions.

- It is an interpreted language with no compilation runs required.

- SmallBASIC supports structured programming, user-defined structures and modularized source files. It is not object-oriented, though.

- It also shows much leeway in questions of syntax: For many commands, there are alternatives, and for many constructs, there are different synonyms available.

- SmallBASIC comes with its own little IDE.

- Graphics primitives (like lines, circles, etc.) are provided, as well as sound and simple GUI functions.

SmallBASIC, which was originally created for the Palm Pilot personal digital assistant in the late 1990's by Nicholas Christopoulos.

Join the discussion forum:
https://www.syntaxbomb.com/smallbasic

Please report any crashes to one of the following. Be sure to include a small snippet of code causing the issue.

- https://github.com/smallbasic/SmallBASIC/issues
- email: [e-mail]

Ratings and reviews

I felt that my original review was unfair to those who created this and maintain it. It does take some effort to figure out the file system but overall it's an amazing program. Someone needs to make a beginners guide to this and put it on YouTube and somehow make it findable. Chris, I saw your response after posting this. My original wasn't me at my best. LoL Thanks to you and your team for what you do.

First impressions aren't good. I opened the app to find the menu options overwriting each other, and the demonstration program kind of messed up. I have bad eyesight and have '⚙️ > display > font style and size > font size" turned up on my galaxy s23. Is that the problem? Can you please fix the menus so they display properly. Found the help system (👍) and love it, but "autocomplete / code suggestions" would be awesome, thanks. I'll continue exploring now ! Thanks for this!

This deserves much higher praise than it gets. Too many download it who haven't enough knowledge of BASIC or programming, or don't have the patience to go to the website or notice the menu icon, or think it's the MS thing with similar name. As BASIC interpreters go, it's very good indeed and being improved. I just tested it on speed with some graphics routines against a couple of others including rfo, and it was about 10 times faster. The IDE is unusual but fine when you get used to its quirks.

What's new

Add new function android.request
Add new function TRANSPOSE()
Add experimental ioio-otg support
Fix download error when there are duplicate scratch.bas files
Fix TSAVE bug #205
Fix bug: LINEQN tolerance
Fix floating-point number round-precision bug
Fix redim regression
Fix: RTRIM changes input string