At 10:56 AM 12/8/98 +0100, Alex Pozgaj wrote:
>Java News Collector wrote:
>>
>> At 12:06 PM 12/7/98 -0600, Justin Lee wrote:
>> >Ernst de Haan wrote:
>> --- snip ---
>> >Yet, surely the concept of portable code can't be contained within that
>> patent.
>> >Portable, interpreted code has been around far longer than that patent.
>> For an
>> >example, pick any form of BASIC. Isn't Java just another multiplatform
>> >interpreted language? The only difference is the source code is compiled
>> into a
>> >binary format rather than the engligh-esque nature of other intrepreted
>> >languages.
>>
>> Not even that. BASIC tokenized its "executable" before writing it to disk.
>
>Just a minor nit-pick: not every implementation did that.
>
>Let me guess... you too are comming from the Sinclair world, aren't you?
>:-)
>
>
>Cheers, alex.
>--
>"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving
>to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe
>trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe
>is winning." -- Rich Cook
>
Most of the Microsoft interpreters did the tokenized save. It was always
a problem when upgrading DOS. You had to open every .bas file and do
a save with the ", A" switch to save it out if full text format before
replacing BASIC.EXE. Otherwise the new interpreter would transpose some
of the key words in strange ways.
Bob McConnell
N2SPP
