Getting Started with MBASIC¶

Learn the basics of BASIC programming!

Note: This is a tutorial-style introduction for beginners. For detailed reference documentation, see BASIC Language Reference.

What is BASIC?¶

BASIC (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is an easy-to-learn programming language. MBASIC 5.21 is compatible with MBASIC from the 1980s.

Your First Program¶

Every BASIC program is made of numbered lines:

10 PRINT "Hello, World!"
20 END

Line 10 prints text to the screen
Line 20 ends the program
Line numbers tell BASIC the order to run lines

How to Enter Programs¶

See your UI-specific help for how to type programs:

Curses UI - Terminal interface
Tkinter UI - Graphical interface
CLI - Command-line REPL

Basic Concepts¶

Line Numbers¶

Every line starts with a number: 10, 20, 30
Numbers can be 1-65535
Lines execute in numerical order
Common practice: increment by 10 (leaves room to insert lines)

Printing Output¶

10 PRINT "Hello"
20 PRINT 42
30 PRINT "The answer is"; 42

See: PRINT statement

Variables¶

10 A = 5
20 B = 10
30 PRINT "Sum is"; A + B

See: Variables and Data Types

Getting Input¶

10 INPUT "Enter your name: ", N$
20 PRINT "Hello, "; N$

See: INPUT statement

Program Flow¶

Loops¶

10 FOR I = 1 TO 10
20   PRINT I
30 NEXT I

See: FOR-NEXT loops

Conditionals¶

10 INPUT "Enter a number: ", N
20 IF N > 10 THEN PRINT "Big!" ELSE PRINT "Small"

See: IF-THEN-ELSE