Wirt Atmar wrote:
>
> Larry asks:
>
> > The second part of my email was, Where can I get an HP3000 Basic Manual?
>
> Because of these qualities, it makes an exceptionally good applications
> programming language, particularly so for putting together user-interactive
> screens that feed data to an IMAGE database(s).

Growthpower is written in Basic. The Order Entry module alone is 40
separate source-code segments.

> What the Pocket Guide doesn't have is much information regarding how to
> compile, invoke and chain BASIC programs -- or how to call the special
> BASIC-IMAGE intrinsics (that material was in the old IMAGE manuals).

Essentially, the same way you called them in other languages. The
difference is that you preceed Image calls with an 'X' (such as
*XDBOPEN). One thing that will bite you in the butt is calling *DBOPEN
instead of *XDBOPEN. No error message is issued at all, your program
just doesn't seem to be able to open the database.

Undocumented Image errors are Errors 50 through 53. These mean that
Basic doesn't have enough memory to complete the call (it's limit is
64k). In this case, consolidate code or split out code to another source
module.

There's no such thing as Data Structure in Basic. Each line is limited
to about 240 bytes which means you MUST consolidate all fields with the
same type together. An example is Growthpower's Sales Order Header set
which has all strings first, followed by Short Reals, followed by Long
Reals. Also, strings are limited to 254 bytes so Growthpower uses three
string to hold all the string items and arrays to hold the short and
long reals. Therefore a call to get an Order might be:

 100 COM(1) B2$[36],W5$[210],W6$[224],W8$[216]
 110 COM(1) INTEGER Z[10]
 120 COM(1) REAL W5[27]
 130 COM(1) LONG X5[25]
 500 MAT Z=ZER


1000 *XDBFIND(B2$,"SOH;",FNI(1),Z[*],"SOH-NUMBER;",W5$[1;6])
1005 IF Z[1]=0 THEN DO
1010   *XDBGET(B2$,"SOH;",FNI(5),Z[*],"@;",W5$,W6$,W8$,W5[*],X5[*],"")
1015    IF Z[1]=0 THEN DO
1020      GOSUB 2000
1025      GOTO 1010
1030    DOEND
1035   REM Bail out if Unexpected Error
1040   IF Z[1]<>15 THEN 9700
1045 DOEND

9000 DEF INTEGER FNI(X)=X

Parameters are always Base,Set,Mode,Status,List,Buffer [,Key]. The empty
quote at the end of the XDBGET would be where the Key Value for a Mode-7
Hashed Get would go.

To compile is thus:

:BASICOMP
>CONTROL USLINIT,INIT
>COMPILE SUSO
>CONTROL SEGMENT=SUSO1
>COMPILE SUSO1
 .
 .
 .
>E
:PREP $OLDPASS,SUSO.PROG;MAXDATA=32000;STACK=26500

It gets squirrelly with really large programs because you have to
pre-Build the USL in Segmenter to be big enough.

I wrote an MPEX macro that would take a list of Source Code files and
build a complete Basic Compile Jobstream for it. That was two employers
ago on a since-abandoned box but I think I can recreate it.