= SD-8516 Stellar Basic V1.0

Dennis Allison’s 1975 article in Dr. Dobb’s Journal was a key moment in the history of Computer Science. It contained a formal specification of Tiny BASIC, a BASIC that could be implemented in less than 4 KB.

Stellar BASIC is very much in the same vein as Tiny BASIC, and is intended to evolve over time.

== Core features

* Line-numbered programs
* ''LET'' (often optional)
* ''PRINT''
* ''INPUT''
* ''IF-THEN''
* ''GOTO''
* ''GOSUB'' and ''RETURN''
* ''FOR-NEXT''
* Usually only access to integer variables and integer based math
* Single letter variables (ex. ''A'', ''B'', ''Z'')

* No floating-point math
* Very limited strings
* No arrays
* No file I/O
* Minimal error messages
* Very limited editing commands

Some versions stored programs as text, some as tokenized program code to save space.

== Example BASIC program

<Code:Basic>
10 LET A = 1
20 PRINT A
30 A = A + 1
40 IF A <= 10 THEN GOTO 20
50 END
</Code>

Stellar BASIC will allow this even shorter form:

<Code:Basic>
10 A=1
20 ?A
30 A=A+1
40 IF A<=10 GOTO 20
</Code>

(''?'' is shorthand for ''PRINT''.)

== More Information
Notable Tiny BASIC implementations

* **Palo Alto Tiny BASIC** (Dennis Allison)
* **Li-Chen Wang’s Tiny BASIC**
* **6800 Tiny BASIC**
* **NASCOM Tiny BASIC**
* **Apple I BASIC** (inspired by Tiny BASIC ideas)
* **Micro-Soft 8080 BASIC** (larger, but influenced by Tiny BASIC work)