Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[PaulR]

According to http://www.basic-converter.org/documentation.html#CALL

CALL

"...calls a subroutine if the sub is defined at the end of the program."

I found this to be incorrect - it only seems to work if the SUB is defined at the start of the program (and it does not seem to be required in that case anyway).

Just in case anyone else is banging their head against a wall with this as I've just done for an hour (the compiler log message wasn't very helpful in my case).

Paul

[vovchik]

Dear Paul,

CALL is used if an invocation is made prior to the definition of the SUB. For all practical purposes, you should program like in Pascal, defining your global vars, doing imports, writing your SUBs and FUNCTIONs and then calling a "MAIN". It will make life easier and the code much more readable after, say, three months.

With kind regards,
vovchik

PS. And then very little need for CALL. Sometimes yes, but mostly no.

[PaulR]

Hi vovchik

I understand but it doesn't seem to work in that way. I had my program laid out like so (with the SUB at the end):

Some code here
CALL foo()
END

SUB foo()
...
ENDSUB


If I restructure it like this it works....

SUB foo()

ENDSUB

Some code here
CALL foo()
END

Thanks for the reply,

Paul

[vovchik]

Dear Paul,

I have a coded few thousand programs/subs and functions in BaCon and have not run across your problem. You first define the subs and then invoke them in your main, which, preferably, should be short and situated at the end of your code.

With kind regards,
vovchik

[sunburnt]

PaulR; Everything you type is checked to be sure it lines up with what it does.
The program has to read the SUB/FUNCTION first or the main code calling it has nothing to call.
Even Bash throws an error if you call a function before the function is read.

You get an error if a string variable is used without setting it first.
A string variable does not default to "", it equals "null" ( not the same ).
So set new strings you are going to use "empty": NewStr$ = ""

Integers default to 0, which is nice as you don`t need to set them first to use them.
And I think all the number types default to 0, but I have not checked this out... vovchik.?
.

[sunburnt]

vovchik; A Q if I could.

I`m writing a general purpose GUI maker.
It reads a file for commands to make the GUI.
It then needs another file for the click events.

My problem is you can`t use variables to specify include files.
For the GUI maker to be truly useful it has to be like GtkDialog and be reusable.
So different GUI files need event files named for that GUI file.
/path/FileName.gui
/path/FileName.clk
The other problem is that you can`t use text read from a file for BaCon code.

Here`s the GUI file, very simple and quick to write ( unlike GtkDialog ):

[vovchik]

Dear Terry,

I have also thought that it would be convenient to do this:

[sunburnt]

I thought of that too, but text could only call a predetermined set of actions.
IF the line is XXX THEN call SUB.
How can text be made to be usable commands to Bacon?

The very best would be able to include the event file.
So then all of the the events would have to be in one file, not the best setup.
Or one included file could include many different event files, only all of them.

Bash has many capabilities that Basic doesn`t even come close to.
It`s horribly limiting... Almost a stunted language.

vovchik; If I`ve missed something that solves this, please give me an example.

[PaulR]

Sorry to bring this back on topic

Here's the original problem. Main code followed including a CALL to the SUB defined after the main code, which according to the docs should work as I first posted:

CALL - "...calls a subroutine if the sub is defined at the end of the program."

[vovchik]

Dear Paul,

The following works for me (try adding a newline to the end of your code), although the STANDARD BaCon way would be to put the SUB first and then the main:

[PaulR]

Hi vovchik

Very odd. I added a newline to my code and the compiler falls over as before. I copy/pasted your example and it had the same problem. I added a newline to your code an it compiles fine!

I'll stick to the conventional layout in future

At least I know I wasn't banging my head against the wall because of a mistake I'd made (for a change!).

Best regards

Paul[/b]

[L18L]

[PaulR]

But my code wouldn't compile even with a new line at the end. Maybe there's some invisible character luring in the code that I copied from the net...

Paul

[vovchik]

Dear Paul,

I use Geany, and it shows most of those weird chars as squares with some numbers inside. Save the code back as UNICODE-UTF8 and with Unix line endings (under the Document menu in Geany). Or cat the code to a terminal and copy from there. I have often seen weird chars in code coming from the DOS/M$ world. Usually, that stuff just needs to be removed/obliterated via search and replace.

With kind regards,
vovchik

[PaulR]

sunburnt, I'm not sure if this would help but here goes:

You could put your commands in a plain text file, parse that file and write it out in BaCon source form then invoke Bacon to compile it.

For example, command.txt containing this line

label Type of cheese

is parsed and written into the file myprog.bac as

label123=MARK("Type of cheese"), 50, 100)

where '123', '50' and '100' are either included in the command.txt or calculated in the parser. (If you're including them in the source you might as well just write the program though I suppose!).

You could then execute 'bacon myprog.bac' - you'd end up with an executable built from a simple text only command file.

You could expand the technique to add your event handlers so a line in command.txt like;

button OK, confirmAction

would create the button, attach the sub confirmAction and copy/paste the confirmAction section from your click.txt file into myprog.bac.

Paul