akbasic/README.md

This BASIC is styled after Commodore BASIC 7.0 and the Dartmouth BASIC from 1964. It is a C rewrite of basicinterpreter, which was itself built from the instructions for the Java implementation of Lox in craftinginterpreters.com before striking off on its own. The Go version is vendored at deps/basicinterpret and is the behavioural specification: when a question about semantics comes up, the answer lives in that code. Its acceptance corpus is checked in here at tests/reference/ and runs on every build, so nothing about building or testing this project needs that submodule any more.

git submodule update --init --recursive
cmake -S . -B build
cmake --build build --parallel

# To use the interactive REPL
./build/basic

# To run a basic file from the command line
./build/basic tests/reference/language/functions.bas

# The test suite: unit tests plus the Go version's own corpus, byte-compared
ctest --test-dir build --output-on-failure

# API documentation, into build/docs/html
doxygen Doxyfile

# With the libakgl-backed sink, devices and SDL frontend. Off by default, because
# this pulls in SDL3 and the whole interpreter builds and tests without it.
cmake -S . -B build-akgl -DAKBASIC_WITH_AKGL=ON
cmake --build build-akgl --parallel
ctest --test-dir build-akgl --output-on-failure

# That build of `basic` is a different program: it opens an 800x600 window, draws
# BASIC output into it in the Commodore font, and still puts every byte on stdout.
./build-akgl/basic tests/reference/language/functions.bas

Optional tools, and what you lose without them

Everything above works with cmake and a C compiler. Three tools are optional, and each one buys a specific test rather than general convenience:

Tool	Buys	Without it
xdotool + script(1)	akgl_typing — types at a real focused SDL window with a real keyboard	The test reports Skipped. Nothing fails
gcovr	the coverage target and its 90%-of-lines gate	-DAKBASIC_COVERAGE=ON will not configure
python3	scripts/mutation_test.py and the mutation target	The target is not created

akgl_typing is worth installing xdotool for. It is the only test that exercises the path a person actually uses — X11 delivers a key press to a focused window, SDL composes it, libakgl rings it, the editor echoes it, the interpreter runs it. Every other keyboard test synthesises SDL events, which tests the code downstream of SDL and cannot test the code upstream of it. That gap shipped a bug: the frontend never called SDL_StartTextInput(), so SDL emitted no text-input events at all, the line editor dropped every keystroke, and the whole suite stayed green because it was pushing those events itself.

It needs a real X server and it steals keyboard focus for about fifteen seconds. Set AKBASIC_SKIP_INTERACTIVE=1 to skip it while you are using the machine. It skips itself automatically when there is no display, no xdotool, or no window manager answering — CTest reports Skipped rather than a failure, because none of those means the answer is no.

There are two workflows. .gitea/workflows/ci.yaml runs on every push: the suite, ASan+UBSan, coverage gated at 90% of lines, and mutation testing over two files. The coverage report is uploaded as a code-coverage artifact.

.gitea/workflows/release.yaml is manual (workflow_dispatch) and is what a release runs. It builds the API documentation and uploads it as api-documentation, and it mutates the whole src/ tree — 3675 mutants, hours of runner time, which is why it is not on the push path. It takes two optional inputs: a mutation threshold, and a space-separated file list to narrow the run.

Mutation testing is worth a word, because it is the only gate that checks the error-handling control flow at all. libakerror's ATTEMPT/CATCH/PASS macros expand at their call sites, so gcov attributes them to the caller and line coverage cannot see them. scripts/mutation_test.py breaks the library many small ways and checks that the suite notices:

cmake --build build --target mutation          # the whole src/ tree; slow, hours
python3 scripts/mutation_test.py --target src/value.c --list
python3 scripts/mutation_test.py --target src/value.c --threshold 70

It earns its keep. Writing this suite, it found that nothing exercised a maximum-length string or symbol-table key, so every MAX - 1 off-by-one in a strncpy would have gone unnoticed; and that errno was never asserted to be cleared before a strtoll, which is what stops a stale ERANGE from failing a perfectly valid conversion.

The Doxyfile is configured the way libakgl's is, including WARN_AS_ERROR = FAIL_ON_WARNINGS — a doc block that documents some of a function's parameters but not all of them fails the run, so doxygen Doxyfile is a gate rather than a convenience. Every one of the 114 public declarations under include/akbasic/ carries a @brief, a @param per parameter, a @return and its @throws.

Why rewrite it in C?

Three reasons, in the order they matter.

The interpreter is meant to end up inside libakgl as a scripting engine for game authors, and libakgl is C. Embedding a Go runtime in a C game is not a thing anybody should do to themselves.

The Go version was already written against static pools and explicit state structs — [MAX_SOURCE_LINES]BasicSourceLine, a fixed variable pool, a 32-leaf ceiling per line — so it ports across almost directly. It reads like C that happens to be spelled in Go. Rewriting it in the idiom of libakerror and libakstdlib was less work than it sounds.

And the port is a good excuse to find out what the original actually does, as opposed to what it looks like it does. It found five defects nobody knew about. See "What Isn't Implemented / Isn't Working", below.

What Works?

Everything the Go version does, and by now a little more. All 41 .bas files of the reference's own corpus produce the expected output, including error messages and the trailing blank line after one. Each is a separate CTest case, so a failure names the file.

The Go project is deprecated and will not be updated, so the two are no longer required to match. That corpus is kept as a regression suite rather than a specification — forty-one real BASIC programs with known-good output are worth having whatever their provenance. Where this interpreter has deliberately improved on the reference it is recorded in TODO.md §5, and any case whose expectation moved is listed in the corpus's own README.

That corpus lives at tests/reference/, copied byte for byte out of the Go project. Its README records where it came from and the rule for changing it: diverge deliberately, never by accident. A failure there means this interpreter's behaviour changed — nine times in ten that is a bug you just introduced, and the tenth time it is an improvement that should move the expectation, say why, and add a line to TODO.md §5.

Case Sensitivity

The old computers BASIC was originally written on only had CAPITAL LETTER KEYS on their keyboards. Modern keyboards have the indescribable luxury of upper and lower case. In this basic, verbs and function names are case insensitive. Variable names are case sensitive.

Variables

• A# Integer variables
• A% Float variables
• A$ String variables. Strings support addition operations with other types.
• LET is supported but optional
• Variables are strongly typed

Note that % means float here, which inverts the Commodore convention where % is integer. That is what the Go version does and it is not being changed out from under anybody.

Arrays

• DIM IDENTIFIER(DIMENSION[, ...]) allows for provisioning of multiple dimensional arrays
• DIM A$(3) results in a single dimensional array of strings with 3 elements
• PRINT A$(2) accesses the last element in an array and returns it to the verb
• LEN(A#) on an array returns its total element count
• Arrays are strongly typed

Expressions

• +
• -
• ^
• * (also works on strings)
• /
• < <= <> == >= > less than, less than equal, not equal, equal, greater equal, greater than

Expressions can be grouped with () arbitrarily deeply. Currently the interpreter has a limit of 32 tokens and leaves per line. In effect this means about 16 operations in a single line.

Commands (Verbs)

The following commands/verbs are implemented:

• AUTO n : Turn automatic line numbering on/off at increments of n
• REM : everything after this is a comment
• DATA LITERAL[, ...]: Define a series of literal values that can be read by a preceding READ verb
• DEF FN(X, ...) = expression : Define a function with arguments that performs a given expression. See also "Subroutines", below.
• DELETE [n-n]: Delete some portion of the lines in the current program
  • DELETE: Delete ALL lines in the program
  • DELETE n-n: Delete lines between n and n (inclusive)
  • DELETE -n: Delete lines from 0 to n
  • DELETE n: Delete lines from n to the end of the program
• DLOAD FILENAME: Load the BASIC program in the file FILENAME (string literal or string variable) into memory
• DSAVE FILENAME: Save the current BASIC program in memory to the file specified by FILENAME (string literal or string variable)
• EXIT: Exit a loop before it would normally finish
• FOR : Iterate over a range of values and perform (statement) or block each time.

10 FOR I# = 1 TO 5
20 REM Do some stuff in here
30 NEXT I#

10 FOR I# = 1 TO 5 STEP 2
20 REM Do some stuff here
30 NEXT I#

• CLR: Drop every variable and function definition, keeping the program
• CONT: Resume a program stopped by STOP, from where it stopped. Refused if nothing stopped
• GOTO n: Go to line n in the program
• GOSUB n: Go to line n in the program and return here when RETURN is found
• HELP: Re-list the line the last error happened on
• IF (comparison) THEN (statement) [ELSE (statement)] : Conditional branching. Everything after THEN on the line belongs to the condition, and everything after an ELSE belongs to the ELSE — the same scoping a C128 uses
• INPUT "PROMPT STRING" VARIABLE: Read input from the user and store it in the named variable
• LABEL IDENTIFIER: Place a label at the current line number. Labels are constant integer identifiers that can be used in expressions like variables (including GOTO) but which cannot be assigned to. Labels do not have a type suffix ($, # or %).
• LIST [n-n]: List all or a portion of the lines in the current program, with the same range forms as DELETE
• NEW: Erase the program and every variable, and take the line counter home
• POKE ADDRESS, VALUE: Poke the single byte VALUE into the ADDRESS
• PRINT (expression)
• QUIT : Exit the interpreter
• READ IDENTIFIER[, ...] : Fill the named variables with data from a subsequent DATA statement
• RETURN : return from GOSUB to the point where it was called
• RUN [n]: Run the program currently in memory, optionally starting at line n
• STOP: Stop program execution at the current point. CONT resumes from there
• SWAP A, B: Exchange two variables of the same type, arrays and their dimensions included
• TRON / TROFF: Turn line tracing on and off. A traced program prints [10][20] inline ahead of each line, as a C128 does

Statements are separated by colons, so a line can hold several: 10 A# = 1 : PRINT A#. An empty statement is legal, so a trailing colon and a run of them are both fine.

Functions

The following functions are implemented

• ABS(x#|x%): Return the absolute value of the float or integer argument
• ATN(x#|x%): Return the arctangent of the float or integer argument. Input and output are in radians.
• CHR(x#): Return the character value of the UTF-8 unicode codepoint in x#. Returns as a string.
• COS(x#|x%): Return the cosine of the float or integer argument. Input and output are in radians.
• HEX(x#): Return the string representation of the integer number in x#
• INSTR(X$, Y$): Return the index of Y$ within X$ (-1 if not present)
• LEN(var$): Return the length of the object var$ (either a string or an array)
• LEFT(X$, Y#): Return the leftmost Y# characters of the string in X$. Y# is clamped to LEN(X$).
• LOG(X#|X%): Return the natural logarithm of X#|X%
• MID(var$, start, length) : Return a substring from var$
• MOD(x#, y#): Return the modulus of ( x / y). Only works on integers.
• PEEK(X): Return the value of the BYTE at the memory location of integer X and return it as an integer
• POINTER(X): Return the address in memory for the value of the variable identified in X. This is the direct integer, float or string value stored, it is not a reference to the internal variable structure.
• POINTERVAR(X) : Return the address in memory of the variable X. This is the address of the internal akbasic_Variable structure, which includes additional metadata about the variable, in addition to the value. For a pointer directly to the value, use POINTER.
• RAD(X#|X%): Convert degrees to radians
• RIGHT(X$, Y#): Return the rightmost Y# characters of the string in X$. Y# is clamped to LEN(X$).
• SGN(X#): Returns the sign of X# (-1 for negative, 1 for positive, 0 if 0).
• SHL(X#, Y#): Returns the value of X# shifted left Y# bits
• SHR(X#, Y#): Returns the value of X# shifted right Y# bits
• SIN(X#|X%): Returns the sine of the float or integer argument. Input and output are radians.
• SPC(X#): Returns a string of X# spaces. This is included for compatibility, you can also use (" " * X) to multiply strings.
• STR(X#): Returns the string representation of X.
• TAN(X#|X%): Returns the tangent of the float or integer variable X. Input and output are in radians.
• VAL(X$): Returns the float value of the number in X$
• XOR(X#, Y#): Performs a bitwise exclusive OR on the two integer arguments

Unlike the Go version, none of these are bootstrapped by running a BASIC program of DEF statements through the interpreter at startup. A builtin's name, arity and handler are one row in the dispatch table in src/verbs.c, which means the interpreter no longer has to be running before the interpreter is ready.

Subroutines

In addition to DEF, GOTO and GOSUB, this BASIC also implements subroutines that accept arguments, return a value, and can be called as functions. Example

10 DEF ADDTWO(A#, B#)
20 C# = A# + B#
30 RETURN C#
40 D# = ADDTWO(3, 5)
50 PRINT D#

Subroutines must be defined before they are called. Subroutines share the global variable scope with the rest of the program.

Embedding the interpreter

The whole point of the rewrite. libakbasic is a static library with a thin src/main.c driver on top; the REPL, argv handling and QUIT belong to the driver, not to the library. A host program links the library and keeps control.

Four rules the library holds to, because a game engine cannot tolerate a scripting language that breaks any of them:

• Nothing terminates the process. No exit(), no abort(), no panic. Errors come back as akerr_ErrorContext *. FINISH_NORETURN never appears in the library at all — only in a main(), which today means the driver's and the embedding example's.
• Nothing calls malloc. Every object comes from a fixed pool inside akbasic_Runtime. Exhausting one is a diagnosable error, not a crash and not a slow leak.
• No file-scope mutable state. Interpreter state lives in an akbasic_Runtime you own. Two of them in one process do not interfere.
• The host owns the loop. akbasic_runtime_run(rt, n) executes at most n source lines and returns. A script with an infinite loop costs you n lines per frame and nothing else.

A complete, compiled, runnable example is in examples/embed.c — it is built by every build and registered as a test, so it cannot rot. The shape is:

#include <akerror.h>
#include <akbasic/runtime.h>
#include <akbasic/sink.h>

/*
 * The runtime carries every pool the interpreter owns -- a few megabytes -- so
 * it goes in static storage or inside your own game state, never on the stack.
 */
static akbasic_Runtime SCRIPT;

static const char *PROGRAM =
    "10 PRINT \"COUNTING:\"\n"
    "20 FOR I# = 1 TO 5\n"
    "30   PRINT I# * I#\n"
    "40 NEXT I#\n";

akerr_ErrorContext AKERR_NOIGNORE *script_start(akbasic_TextSink *sink)
{
    PREPARE_ERROR(errctx);

    PASS(errctx, akbasic_runtime_init(&SCRIPT, sink));
    PASS(errctx, akbasic_runtime_load(&SCRIPT, PROGRAM));
    PASS(errctx, akbasic_runtime_start(&SCRIPT, AKBASIC_MODE_RUN));
    SUCCEED_RETURN(errctx);
}

/* Call this once per frame. Eight source lines, then back to your renderer. */
akerr_ErrorContext AKERR_NOIGNORE *script_tick(void)
{
    PREPARE_ERROR(errctx);

    if ( SCRIPT.mode == AKBASIC_MODE_QUIT ) {
	SUCCEED_RETURN(errctx);
    }
    PASS(errctx, akbasic_runtime_run(&SCRIPT, 8));
    SUCCEED_RETURN(errctx);
}

Exchanging variables with the host

Yes — in both directions, for integers, floats and strings, using the same variable pool the script itself uses. There is no marshalling layer and no copy: the host and the script are looking at the same akbasic_Value.

akbasic_runtime_global() finds a variable by name and creates it if it does not exist. The type comes from the name's suffix, exactly as it does for BASIC code, so HP# is an integer and NAME$ is a string. Every scalar is really a one-element array, which is why the subscript list is {0} with a count of 1.

/* host -> script, before the script starts */
akerr_ErrorContext AKERR_NOIGNORE *host_set_int(akbasic_Runtime *obj, const char *name, int64_t value)
{
    PREPARE_ERROR(errctx);
    akbasic_Variable *variable = NULL;
    int64_t subscript[1] = { 0 };

    PASS(errctx, akbasic_runtime_global(obj, name, &variable));
    PASS(errctx, akbasic_variable_set_integer(variable, value, subscript, 1));
    SUCCEED_RETURN(errctx);
}

/* script -> host, after it stops */
akerr_ErrorContext AKERR_NOIGNORE *host_get_int(akbasic_Runtime *obj, const char *name, int64_t *dest)
{
    PREPARE_ERROR(errctx);
    akbasic_Variable *variable = NULL;
    akbasic_Value *value = NULL;
    int64_t subscript[1] = { 0 };

    PASS(errctx, akbasic_runtime_global(obj, name, &variable));
    PASS(errctx, akbasic_variable_get_subscript(variable, subscript, 1, &value));
    FAIL_NONZERO_RETURN(errctx, (value->valuetype != AKBASIC_TYPE_INTEGER), AKBASIC_ERR_TYPE,
			"%s is not an integer", name);
    *dest = value->intval;
    SUCCEED_RETURN(errctx);
}

Used like this, with akbasic_variable_set_string and set_float as the other two:

CATCH(errctx, akbasic_runtime_load(&SCRIPT, PROGRAM));

CATCH(errctx, host_set_int(&SCRIPT, "HP#", 100));          /* seed */
CATCH(errctx, host_set_int(&SCRIPT, "LEVEL#", 7));
CATCH(errctx, host_set_string(&SCRIPT, "NAME$", "LINK"));

CATCH(errctx, akbasic_runtime_start(&SCRIPT, AKBASIC_MODE_RUN));
CATCH(errctx, akbasic_runtime_run(&SCRIPT, 0));

CATCH(errctx, host_get_int(&SCRIPT, "SCORE#", &score));    /* collect */

The full thing, including the string and float forms, is in examples/hostvars.c. It is built and run by every build.

Which scope it lands in, and why you should not care

akbasic_runtime_global() always resolves against the script's outermost scope, so seeding before akbasic_runtime_start(), reading after the script stops, and creating a variable while a script is suspended part-way through a bounded akbasic_runtime_run() all do the same, obvious thing.

That is worth one paragraph of history, because the obvious-looking alternative is a trap. akbasic_environment_get() resolves against obj->environment — whatever scope is active — and a suspended script is usually inside a FOR or GOSUB body. A variable created through it lands in that body and dies when the body pops: the script reads it correctly inside the loop and gets 0 the moment the loop ends, with nothing raised anywhere. Reaching for the root explicitly does not help either, because only the active environment auto-creates, so akbasic_environment_get(root, "NEW#", &var) with a child active hands back NULL and no error and an unchecked host dereferences it.

Both of those are still true of akbasic_environment_get(), which is the right behaviour for what the interpreter uses it for. They are simply not your problem: use akbasic_runtime_global().

examples/hostvars.c shows the difference rather than describing it, and tests/hostvars.c asserts it — a global created from inside a FOR body, and from inside a GOSUB, and still readable by the script afterwards.

Where the output goes

PRINT writes through an akbasic_TextSink, which is a record of function pointers plus whatever state you hang off self:

typedef struct akbasic_TextSink
{
    void *self;
    akerr_ErrorContext AKERR_NOIGNORE *(*write)(struct akbasic_TextSink *self, const char *text);
    akerr_ErrorContext AKERR_NOIGNORE *(*writeln)(struct akbasic_TextSink *self, const char *text);
    akerr_ErrorContext AKERR_NOIGNORE *(*readline)(struct akbasic_TextSink *self, char *dest, size_t len, bool *eof);
    akerr_ErrorContext AKERR_NOIGNORE *(*clear)(struct akbasic_TextSink *self);
} akbasic_TextSink;

akbasic_sink_init_stdio() ships with the library and is what the driver and the golden-file suite use. A game supplies its own and draws into a text layer. The interpreter never owns a window, a renderer or an event loop, and readline is expected to set *eof rather than block — that is how INPUT behaves sanely inside a frame.

akbasic_sink_init_tee() also ships with the library and composes two sinks into one: writes go to both, and readline comes from whichever of the two you name as the reader. That is how the SDL build puts PRINT in a window and on stdout without the interpreter carrying a second write. It needs no SDL, so a game can use it to log a script's output to a file while it draws.

Error codes

The library reserves status values 512–767 with libakerror's registry, under the owner string "akbasic". akbasic_runtime_init() claims the range for you and is idempotent, so calling it twice is harmless and calling it after your own initialization is fine. If something else in the process already owns part of that band, init fails loudly rather than silently aliasing your error codes onto somebody else's.

For reference, the coordinated map across this dependency stack is libakerror 0–255, libakgl 256–260, and akbasic 512–767.

Linking

add_subdirectory(deps/akbasic EXCLUDE_FROM_ALL)
target_link_libraries(YOUR_GAME PRIVATE akbasic::akbasic)

akbasic links akerror::akerror and akstdlib::akstdlib publicly, so you inherit both. If your project already declares those targets, declare them before adding this one — the same rule that applies to libakgl.

libakgl itself is not a dependency of the core library. -DAKBASIC_WITH_AKGL=ON builds two additional targets, and the split between them is the one that matters if you are embedding this:

Target	What it is	Link it?
akbasic	The interpreter. No SDL, no window, nothing that terminates the process.	Always.
akbasic_akgl	The akgl-backed text sink and the graphics, sound and input backends. Every one takes a renderer, a font or a device you already created.	If you want the interpreter drawing through your libakgl renderer.
akbasic_frontend	The standalone program's host: it creates the window, opens the font, pumps SDL events and owns the frame loop.	No. You are the host. This exists so basic can be one.

Both are off by default, which is why the interpreter and its whole test suite build on a machine with no SDL.

The graphics, sound and console verbs reach hardware through records of function pointers on the runtime — akbasic_GraphicsBackend, akbasic_AudioBackend and akbasic_InputBackend, attached with akbasic_runtime_set_devices(). All three may be NULL, which is what a default build of the standalone driver gives them: a verb that needs a device it was not given raises rather than crashing, and a PRINT-only program never notices. An SDL build attaches all three. A host that renders some other way supplies its own records and never links libakgl at all.

Two things about those verbs that differ from a real C128, because both would otherwise surprise you. PLAY does not block — it queues its notes and akbasic_runtime_step() releases them against whatever time you last passed to akbasic_runtime_settime(), so the statement after a PLAY runs immediately. And GETKEY holds the program without blocking you: the step still returns, it simply does not advance until a key arrives.

Limits

Everything is bounded and pre-declared. The numbers are in include/akbasic/types.h and are the Go version's, plus three the Go version did not need because it called make():

Constant	Value	What it bounds
AKBASIC_MAX_LEAVES / _TOKENS	32	AST nodes and tokens per source line (~16 operations)
AKBASIC_MAX_VALUES	64	Intermediate values per line
AKBASIC_MAX_VARIABLES	128	Variables per scope
AKBASIC_MAX_SOURCE_LINES	9999	Program length
AKBASIC_MAX_LINE_LENGTH	256	Characters per line
AKBASIC_MAX_STRING_LENGTH	256	Characters in a string value
AKBASIC_MAX_ENVIRONMENTS	32	Nesting depth of FOR and GOSUB
AKBASIC_MAX_ARRAY_ELEMENTS	1024	Elements in one array
AKBASIC_MAX_ARRAY_VALUES	4096	Array elements across all variables

Raising any of them costs BSS and nothing else. An akbasic_Runtime is presently 10.1MB, and it is worth knowing where that goes before you reach for a knob: 4.1MB is the environment pool, 2.5MB the 9999-line source table, 2.3MB the function-definition pool and 1.2MB the array value pool. AKBASIC_MAX_ENVIRONMENTS is the expensive one — each environment carries its own token, leaf and value arrays — so halving it to 16 saves twice what halving the source table does.

What Isn't Implemented / Isn't Working

Defects inherited from the Go version

These are reproduced deliberately, not fixed. The Go version's test corpus is the acceptance suite, so a silent correction here is a behaviour change that would show up as a failing golden file. Each is catalogued in TODO.md section 6 with the file and line, and tests/known_reference_defects.c asserts the correct contract for six of them under AKBASIC_KNOWN_FAILING_TESTS — when one is fixed, CTest reports "unexpectedly passed", which is the cue to move it.

Five of them the port found; nobody knew about these before:

• 1 - 2 - 3 computes 1 - 2. Subtraction stops after one operator where addition loops, so the rest of the line is abandoned in the token stream. This is the bad one — it is a wrong answer, not a refused one. 2 ^ 3 ^ 2 has the same shape.
• A negative literal cannot be passed to a builtin. ABS(-9) is rejected with "function ABS takes 1 arguments, received 2", because the arity counter walks the same .right pointer a unary-minus leaf keeps its operand on. Assign to a variable first, as the Go version's own sgn.bas test quietly does.
• A comparison operator in a line's final column is dropped. A# = produces one token, not two, because the scanner cannot peek past the end of the line and gives up without recording the operator.
• Hex literals do not work. 0xff lexes as 0x followed by an identifier ff. The base-16 branch in the literal parser is unreachable, so the hex support the Go README implies has never existed.
• PRINT$ is accepted as a variable name. The "Reserved word in variable name" check compares the lexeme including its type suffix against the keyword table, so it never matches and never fires.

Plus six more the original already carried: a leading 0 selects base 8, so PRINT 010 prints 8 and PRINT 08 will not parse; setBoolean tags the value it builds TYPE_STRING; stopWaiting ignores its argument, so an inner block can clear an outer block's pending wait; toString on a variable has its emptiness test inverted; EXIT pops a loop without clearing that wait; and mathPlus mutates its left operand in place where every other operator clones. That last one is load-bearing rather than merely wrong — NEXT relies on it to advance the loop counter, so it cannot be fixed on its own.

Not implemented

• Multiple statements on one line (e.g. 10 PRINT A$ : REM This prints the thing). The COLON token exists and nothing consumes it.
• Using an array reference inside a parameter list (e.g. READ A$(0), B#) results in parsing errors
• APPEND, BACKUP, BEGIN, BEND, BLOAD, BOOT, BOX, BSAVE
• CATALOG, CHAR, CIRCLE, CLOSE, CLR, CMD, COLLECT, COLLISION, COLOR, CONCAT, CONT, COPY
• DCLEAR, DCLOSE, DIRECTORY, DOPEN, DRAW, DVERIFY
• DO, LOOP, WHILE, UNTIL. You can do the same thing with IF and GOTO.
• END, ENVELOPE, ER, ERR
• FETCH, FILTER
• GET, GETKEY, GRAPHIC, GSHAPE
• HEADER, HELP
• KEY, LOAD, LOCATE
• MOVSPR, NEW, ON, PAINT, PLAY, PUDEF
• RENAME, RENUMBER, RESTORE, RESUME
• SAVE, SCALE, SCNCLR, SCRATCH, SLEEP, SOUND
• SPRCOLOR, SPRDEF, SPRITE, SPRSAV, SSHAPE, STASH, SWAP, SYS
• TEMPO, TI, TRAP, TROFF, TRON
• USING, VERIFY, VOL, WAIT, WIDTH, WINDOW
• The I/O-channel variants (GETIO, INPUTIO, OPENIO, PRINTIO, RECORDIO)

One of those is still blocked on a missing libakgl capability, and it is only one. Four were — text measurement, immediate-mode drawing, audio, and a non-blocking keystroke read — and rather than work around them here they were filed in deps/libakgl/TODO.md under "API gaps blocking akbasic". All four have since landed upstream (akgl_text_measure, the akgl_draw_* family, akgl_audio_*, and akgl_controller_poll_key), so what is left is akbasic-side work.

The exception is FILTER, which sets the SID's filter cutoff, band switches and resonance. akgl_audio_* synthesises raw waveforms and mixes them; there is no filter stage to configure, and SDL3 supplies no primitive to build one from. Until an akgl_audio_filter() exists, FILTER parses and then refuses at execution rather than being silently ignored — a program that asks for a low-pass and gets an unfiltered square wave has been lied to.

Deliberately out of scope

• BANK - the modern PC memory layout is incompatible with the idea of bank switching
• FAST - Irrelevant on modern PC CPUs
• MONITOR - there is no machine-language monitor to drop into

Dependencies

• libakerror 1.0.0 — TRY/CATCH-style error contexts. Every function that can fail returns one.
• libakstdlib 0.2.0 — libc wrappers that report through libakerror.
• libakgl 0.3.0 — optional, only for -DAKBASIC_WITH_AKGL=ON. Pulls in SDL3. 0.3.0 closed every API gap this project had filed against it, so there are no libakgl workarounds left here.
• basicinterpret — the Go original. Vendored as the behavioural spec for questions about semantics, and for nothing else: its acceptance corpus and its Commodore font are checked in here now, so the build and the test suite do not need it. Not linked, not built, and safe to omit.

Everything is a submodule; git submodule update --init --recursive gets all of it. There is nothing to install first.

String-to-number conversion goes straight to libakstdlib, which raises on no digits, on trailing junk and on overflow — so VAL("garbage") is an error rather than a silent 0. This repository carried its own src/convert.c wrapper until libakstdlib 0.2.0 grew that contract; tests/numeric_contract.c now pins it from this side, because a regression in it would make four things quietly return zero.