collapseos/apps/basic/README.md

basic

This is a BASIC interpreter which has been written from scratch for Collapse OS. There are many existing z80 implementations around, some of them open source and most of them good and efficient, but because a lot of that code overlaps with code that has already been written for zasm, I believe that it's better to reuse those bits of code.

Design goal

The reason for including a BASIC dialect in Collapse OS is to supply some form of system administration swiss knife. zasm, ed and the shell can do theoretically anything, but some tasks (which are difficult to predict) can possibly be overly tedious. One can think, for example, about hardware debugging. Poking and peeking around when not sure what we're looking for can be a lot more effective with the help of variables, conditions and for-loops in an interpreter.

Because the goal is not to provide a foundation for complex programs, I'm planning on intentionally crippling this BASIC dialect for the sake of simplicity.

The idea here is that the system administrator would build herself many little tools in assembler and BASIC would be the interactive glue to those tools.

If you find yourself writing complex programs in Collapse OS BASIC, you're on a wrong path. Back off, that program should be in assembler.

Glueing

The glue.asm file in this folder represents the minimal basic system. There are additional modules that can be added that aren't added by default, such as fs.asm because they require kernel options that might not be available.

To include these modules, you'll need to write your own glue file and to hook extra commands through BAS_FINDHOOK. Look for examples in tools/emul and in recipes.

Usage

Upon launch, a prompt is presented, waiting for a command. There are two types of command invocation: direct and numbered.

A direct command is executed immediately. Example: print 42 will print 42 immediately.

A numbered command is added to BASIC's code listing at the specified line number. For example, 10 print 42 will set line 10 to the string print 42.

Code listing can be printed with list and can be ran with run. The listing is kept in order of lines. Line number don't need to be sequential. You can keep leeway in between your lines and then insert a line with a middle number later.

Some commands take arguments. Those are given by typing a whitespace after the command name and then the argument. Additional arguments are given the same way, by typing a whitespace.

Numbers, expressions and variables

Numbers are stored in memory as 16-bit integers (little endian) and numbers being represented by BASIC are expressed as signed integers, in decimal form. Line numbers, however, are expressed and treated as unsigned integers: You can, if you want, put something on line “-1”, but it will be the equivalent of line 65535. When expressing number literals, you can do so either in multiple forms. See “Number literals” in apps/README.md for details.

Expressions are accepted wherever a number is expected. For example, print 2+3 will print 5. See “Expressions” in apps/README.md.

Inside a if command, “truth” expressions are accepted (=, <, >, <=, >=). A thruth expression that doesn't contain a truth operator evaluates the number as-is: zero if false, nonzero is true.

There are 26 one-letter variables in BASIC which can be assigned a 16-bit integer to them. You assign a value to a variable with =. For example, a=42+4 will assign 46 to a (case insensitive). Those variables can then be used in expressions. For example, print a-6 will print 40. All variables are initialized to zero on launch.

Arguments

Some commands take arguments and there are some common patterns regarding them.

One of them is that all commands that “return” something (input, peek, etc.) always to so in variable A.

Another is that whenever a number is expected, expressions, including the ones with variables in it, work fine.

One-liners

The : character, when not inside a "" literal, allows you to cram more than one instruction on the same line.

Things are special with if. All commands following a if are bound to that if's condition. if 0 foo:bar doesn't execute bar.

Another special thing is goto. A goto followed by : will have the commands following the : before the goto occurs.

Commands

There are two types of commands: normal and direct-only. The latter can only be invoked in direct mode, not through a code listing.

list: Direct-only. Prints all lines in the code listing, prefixing them with their associated line number.

run: Direct-only. Runs code from the listing, starting with the first one. If goto was previously called in direct mode, we start from that line instead.

clear: Direct-only. Clears the current code listing.

print <what> [<what>]: Prints the result of the specified expression, then CR/LF. Can be given multiple arguments. In that case, all arguments are printed separately with a space in between. For example, print 12 13 prints 12 13<cr><lf>

Unlike anywhere else, the print command can take a string inside a double quote. That string will be printed as-is. For example, print "foo" 40+2 will print foo 42.

goto <lineno>: Make the next line to be executed the line number specified as an argument. Errors out if line doesn't exist. Argument can be an expression. If invoked in direct mode, run must be called to actually run the line (followed by the next, and so on).

if <cond> <cmds>: If specified condition is true, execute the rest of the line. Otherwise, do nothing. For example, if 2>1 print 12 prints 12 and if 2<1 print 12 does nothing. The argument for this command is a “thruth expression”.

while <cond> <cmds>: As long as specified condition is true, execute specified commands repeatedly.

input [<prompt>]: Prompts the user for a numerical value and puts that value in A. The prompted value is evaluated as an expression and then stored. The command takes an optional string literal parameter. If present, that string will be printed before asking for input. Unlike a print call, there is no CR/LF after that print.

peek/deek <addr>: Put the value at specified memory address into A. peek is for a single byte, deek is for a word (little endian). For example, peek 42 puts the byte value contained in memory address 0x002a into variable A. deek 42 does the same as peek, but also puts the value of 0x002b into A's MSB.

poke/doke <addr> <val>: Put the value of specified expression into specified memory address. For example, poke 42 0x102+0x40 puts 0x42 in memory address 0x2a (MSB is ignored) and doke 42 0x102+0x40 does the same as poke, but also puts 0x01 in memory address 0x2b.

in <port>: Same thing as peek, but for a I/O port. in 42 generates an input I/O on port 42 and stores the byte result in A.

out <port> <val>: Same thing as poke, but for a I/O port. out 42 1+2 generates an output I/O on port 42 with value 3.

getc: Waits for a single character to be typed in the console and then puts that value in A.

putc <char>: Puts the specified character to the console.

puth <char>: Puts the specified character to the console, encoded in two hexadecimal digits. For example, puth 0x42 yields 42. This is useful for spitting binary contents to a console that has special handling of certain control characters.

sleep <units>: Sleep a number of “units” specified by the supplied expression. A “unit” depends on the CPU clock speed. At 4MHz, it is roughly 8 microseconds.

addr <what>: This very handy returns (in A), the address you query for. You can query for two types of things: commands or special stuff.

If you query for a command, type the name of the command as an argument. The address of the associated routine will be returned.

Then, there's the special stuff. This is the list of things you can query for:

• $: the scratchpad.

usr <addr>: This calls the memory address specified as an expression argument. Before doing so, it sets the registers according to a specific logic: Variable A's LSB goes in register A, variable D goes in register DE, H in HL B in BC and X in IX. IY can't be used because it's used for the jump. Then, after the call, the value of the registers are put back into the variables following the same logic.

Let's say, for example, that you want to use the kernel's printstr to print the contents of the scratchpad. First, you would call addr $ to put the address of the scratchpad in A, then do h=a to have that address in HL and, if printstr is, for example, the 21st entry in your jump table, you'd do usr 21*3 and see the scratchpad printed!

Optional modules

As explained in “glueing” section abolve, this folder contains optional modules. Here's the documentation for them.

blk

Block devices commands. Block devices are configured during kernel initialization and are referred to by numbers.

bsel <blkid>: Select the active block device. The active block device is the target of all commands below. You select it by specifying its number. For example, bsel 0 selects the first configured device. bsel 1 selects the second.

A freshly selected blkdev begins with its “pointer” at 0.

bseek <lsw> <msw>: Moves the blkdev “pointer” to the specified offset. The first argument is the offset's least significant half (blkdev supports 32-bit addressing). Is is interpreted as an unsigned integer.

The second argument is optional and is the most significant half of the address. It defaults to 0.

getb: Read a byte in active blkdev at current pointer, then advance the pointer by one. Read byte goes in A.

putb <val>: Writes a byte in active blkdev at current pointer, then advance the pointer by one. The value of the byte is determined by the expression supplied as an argument. Example: putb 42.

fs

fs.asm provides those commands:

fls: prints the list of files contained in the active filesystem.

fopen <fhandle> <fname>: Open file “fname” in handle “fhandle”. File handles are specified in kernel glue code and are in limited number. The kernel glue code also maps to blkids through the glue code. So to know what you're doing here, you have to look at your glue code.

In the emulated code, there are two file handles. Handle 0 maps to blkid 1 and handle 1 maps to blkid 2.

Once a file is opened, you can use the mapped blkid as you would with any block device (bseek, getb, putb).

fnew <blkcnt> <fname>: Allocates space of “blkcnt” blocks (each block is 0x100 bytes in size) for a new file names “fname”. Maximum blkcnt is 0xff.

fdel <fname>: Mark file named “fname” as deleted.

ldbas <fname>: loads the content of the file specified in the argument (as an unquoted filename) and replace the current code listing with this contents. Any line not starting with a number is ignored (not an error).

basPgmHook: That is not a command, but a routine to hook into BAS_FINDHOOK. If you do, whenever a command name isn't found, the filesystem is iterated to see if it finds a file with the same name. If it does, it loads its contents at USER_CODE (from user.h) and calls that address, with HL pointing to the the remaining args in the command line.

The user code called this way follows the usr convention for output, that is, it converts all registers at the end of the call and stores them in appropriate variables. If A is nonzero, an error is considered to have occurred.

It doesn't do var-to-register transfers on input, however. Only HL is passed through (with the contents of the command line).

sdc

sdc.asm provides SD card related commands:

sdci: initializes a SD card for operation. This should be ran whenever you insert a new SD card.

sdcf: flushes current buffers to the SD card. This is done automatically, but only on a “needs to flush” basis, that is, when dirty buffers need to be swapped. This command ensures that all buffers are clean (not dirty).

floppy

floppy.asm provides TRS-80 floppy related commands:

flush: Like sdcf above, but for floppies. Additionally, it invalidates all buffers, allowing you to swap disks and then read proper contents.