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ABSTRACT.048
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1984-04-29
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National CP/M Users Group disk 48 abstracts.
Leor Zolman's BDS-C is rapidly becoming one of the most popular
non-BASIC high-level languages under CP/M, for both the
hobbyist and the professional. A nice structured language at
a reasonable cost, with good documentation, and good execution
speed. ...AND totally integrated into CP/M.
"C" itself it a highly structured language, implementing the
"classic" requirements for structured programming: It can
either directly or indirectly perform DO WHILE, REPEAT UNTIL,
DO CASE, as well as a rich "FOR"-type capability.
With a few exceptions, BDS-C implements "C" as covered in the
Kernighan and Ritchie "The C Programming Language" book, which
comes with BDS-C. I quote the Lifeboat Ad:
Supports structures, unions, 2 dimensional
arrays, pointers, recursion and overlays.
Features optimized code generator, variable
sized buffers for file I/O, and capability
to produce ROMable code. Includes macro
package to enable user to produce linkable
modules with MAC. Floating point functions,
full run-time package and machine code
library sources provided. Linker, library
manager, and textbook provided. Compiler
lacks initializers, statics, floats, and longs.
For the convenience of "experienced" C programmers, BDS-C
allows, for example, "register specification" for a variable,
which, while not implemented, is syntactically accepted. The
most obvious thing missing is a data type of "float", but a
floating point subroutine package is included, and a modified
"printf" to support it.
----------------
Due to the more recent versions having very complete source
code for run-time packages and the system libraries, many
excellent programs have been "squeezed" off of the single
density distribution disk.
This volume, in part, represents a source for these very good
source programs, while offering several interesting .COM files
for those who do not have the BDS-C compiler.
The Users Group solicits additional BDS-C programs, and hopes
to regularly come out with disks containing BDS-C programs.
The programs on the disk are primarily intelligent game pro-
grams, with some H19/H89 programs which take advantage of this
CRT's capabilities, such as graphics. A good utility, TABIFY,
is also included. See Leor's own "VOLUME48.DOC" on the disk,
for comments.
----------------
Here's some additional comments about the programs on the disk:
LIFE.COM: Nice implementation. Enjoyable code to read,
as are most of the programs. An interesting touch when
you decide the configuration is no longer interesting -
press your "del" key, and if you don't smile, you're made
of stone.
MM.COM: So you want to play a simple game of letter guessing,
eh? Try this one. But watch your ego: it can be deflated.
MasterMind is a "simple" game, that makes you think. The
computer generates a random "word" consisting of 4 letters
from A-F. You simply "guess" 4 letters at a time, and MM tells
you how many are "hits" i.e. the right letter in the right
spot, and how many are misses. Thus you deduce the missing
pattern. The game goes a bit slow, however (at least at 2MHz).
Why? MM is computing how many possible words exist based
on the clues it has given you. When this number reaches "1",
it says:
"You should have it by now".
It becomes a real challenge to see how few times you can keep
that message from coming out, and is a "real thrill" to "beat
it" - especially a couple times in a row. However, having it
"know" YOU should "know", but you "missed" catching on for, say
5 turns, makes you feel like a real dummy. I finally made a MM
"worksheet" to try to be more efficient. It looks like:
AB | AB | AB | AB
CD | CD | CD | CD
EF | EF | EF | EF
Thus I guess: A B C D
and hear: 0 hits, 2 misses.
I cross off A in the first column, B in the second, etc. You
can ONLY do this if there were 0 hits. Still you'll be amused.
OTHELLO.COM: Have you the patience to beat this one?
PPONG.COM: fun H19/H89 game. Deflect the ball with "/" and
"\". I was amazed how fast it was on a 9600 baud terminal!
PRESSUP.COM: A challenging game, not quite as bad as Othello.
RALLY: This sounds so interesting I almost bought an H19. If
I had actually seen it in operation, I bet I might. Randy
Suess ran it and said it was excellent, except that the screen
flickered a bit due to lots of reverse video "...but I have an
older H19 and the new ones may be better".
STONE.COM: You get to specify how "hard" the computer works to
beat you, and if you let it work a while, it's nearly un-
beatable.
TABIFY.COM: A nice utility to delete spaces from a file, in-
serting tabs where appropriate, based on the CP/M convention.
TTT.COM: Hmmm, what could be new in a Tic Tac Toe game? Well,
brains, and wit for two things. Ex: it puts its "X", you put
your "o", it thinks a while, and says "I've got ya". If it
thinks for a while, and after several pieces are on the board,
doesn't say "I've got ya", then you MAY be on your way to a
rare win, or more likely a "cat" game. Play it and see.
VOLUME48.DOC: Leor's own comments.
Abstracts by
Ward Christensen