A System for Historic BASIC Program Analysis in Python
Carl Cerecke · 2024
The widespread use of the BASIC programming language in the 1960's and 1970's led to an explosion of simple textbased computer games.These early games are of historical interest, yet no existing tools permit runtime analysis of these programs.A Python system is described which translates vintage BASIC code to Python in such a way that the flavour of the original BASIC is preserved, yet the full power of modern Python development environments remains available.Lines of Python code can be intermingled with lines of BASIC, each accessing the other's variables, and runtime code analysis techniques such as interactive debugging, profiling, and code coverage are available.A mapping of BASIC syntax to similar-looking Python syntax is described, as well as a method to ensure that the BASIC-like Python code operates with the same behaviour of the original BASIC.