MyWiki:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2021 October 23

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October 23

QBasic - bad token

I'm trying to run an old QBASIC program. I loaded the QBASIC interpreter. It gives me a "bad token" at position 51 on this line:

DEF FNday (y, m, d, h) = 367 * y - 7 * (y + (m + 9) \ 12) \ 4 + 275 * m \ 9 + d - 730531.5 + h / 24

That is the closing parentheses after the "+9". What is wrong? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 17:35, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

Is the backslash the appropriate operator for division in QBasic, or should it be a forward slash? b:QBasic/Basic Math shows a forward slash in use.-gadfium 22:02, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

I see that backslash is for integer division. Is it possible that was only introduced in a later version of QBasic?-gadfium 22:06, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

The backslash is integer division. I downloaded QBasic from the Microsoft store today, so I thought that it would be a current version. But I see that there is a QB64 that may be more modern. I'll try that. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 22:39, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

What sub-field in computer science deals with things like calling convention?

What CS discipline analyzes programming language aspects like: calling conventions, assigments, evaluation strategy and so on? That is, not only with the intention of teaching a concrete programming language, but to know what are the options, (dis)advantages, implications, and so on. --Bumptump (talk) 22:27, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

You may be looking for programming language theory: "a branch of computer science that deals with the design, implementation, analysis, characterization, and classification of ... programming languages." Hope this helps, RoxySaunders (talk · contribs) 01:10, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Ermph, probably not PLT (programming language theory) per se, except for evaluation strategy. Otherwise that's the type of thing you would study in a compiler class, which is a software topic rather than a theory one, for the most part. You might look at the Red dragon book. 2602:24A:DE47:B8E0:1B43:29FD:A863:33CA (talk) 07:53, 25 October 2021 (UTC)