Plan9Basic 1.8 (BETA)

Plan9Basic 1.8 (BETA)

The IDE, the libraries and the BASIC engine, built for four targets. Each file is
self-contained: no runtime, no installer, nothing to put on the machine first.

file	platform
Plan9Basic-Win64.exe	Windows 10 or later, x86-64
Plan9Basic-Win32.exe	Windows, 32-bit
Plan9Basic-Linux64	Linux, x86-64 (glibc)
Plan9Basic-Android64.apk	Android 9.0 or later, ARM64

Seven language features

Compound assignment with +=, -=, *= and /=, on variables and on array
elements. A bare RETURN. LET with a list of names. ELSE on the same line as
its IF, and ELSEIF as one word. Text joined to numbers with +. And CONST
for named literals, where assigning to the name is a compile error.

All seven are additions. Every one of the 121 programs already in the repository
compiles to byte-identical assembly, which is how we know nothing existing moved.

The engine, two to four times faster

A game step, timed the way a device runs it, went from 2065 ms to 516 ms.
Arithmetic is 2.04x faster, array access 2.16x and native calls 2.41x. Building a
string in a loop no longer degrades with length: 160,000 appends went from 2200 ms
to 18 ms, with the cost per append flat instead of climbing.

Running them

Windows. The binaries are not code-signed, so the first run shows "Windows
protected your PC". That warning is about the missing certificate, not about the
file. More info -> Run anyway.

Linux. chmod +x Plan9Basic-Linux64 and run it. It needs only libc, libm,
libgcc_s and libz, which any modern distribution already has.

Android. The APK is sideloaded -- it is not on Google Play -- so the installer
has to be allowed once in Settings.

On first launch the IDE fetches Translations.ini in the background, so the first
run wants a network connection. After that it is cached beside the executable.

Building instead

Everything here is built from the same repository, with RAD Studio. The steps for
each platform are on the download and build page.

SHA-256

129283a0eba45ed49c1473c6048fc24fc7b09d220ab2b326561b80e88529965f  Plan9Basic-Win64.exe
4dfa155f32de2c3846b99b392f4e94cc56d720a0c5955aa6d17b133c53f354c4  Plan9Basic-Win32.exe
ad17d209fb67f0601c487dbd5af395d88b9cab20e4314f067b435da4cc76ff6a  Plan9Basic-Linux64
52477517b203bec51da239f7e9d5e2ddba9e0c798384573ca13d21b5bd0c70fd  Plan9Basic-Android64.apk