HP 3000 Manuals HP 3000 Manuals
Chapter 2 Program Development Environment
Introduction
HP Business BASIC/XL's program development environment is a line editor
and program interpreter that aids in program development and manages
program files. HP Business BASIC/XL also has a compiler to compile
programs. Compiled programs run faster than interpreted ones, so it is
often a good idea to develop a program in the interpreter and compile it
once it is running correctly. The compiler is explained in chapter 9.
The material in this chapter is summarized below:
TITLE CONTENT
The Interpreter How to enter the interpreter.
The Current Program General information about the structure of a
program currently in the interpreter.
Creating and Modifying a How to create and modify an HP Business
Program BASIC/XL program; how to name it, list it,
and protect it from listing and
modification.
Managing Program Files How to save a program on a disk file,
retrieve it, and execute it; how to make it
executable but protect it from listing and
modification.
Debugging a Program How to suspend program execution to examine
variable values and change code, and then
resume execution from the same point; how to
trace line execution and changes in variable
values.
HELP Statement How to display information about HP Business
BASIC/XL statements, commands, and errors.
Accessing the Operating How to execute operating system commands
System from HP Business BASIC/XL.
Calculator Mode How HP Business BASIC/XL evaluates
expressions that are not within programs.
NOTE In the examples in this chapter, user input is underlined. User
input ends with RETURN unless otherwise specified. In some
examples, RETURN is shown to clarify that example.