Abstract: of of This publication describes the set programs developed by NBS for the purpose testing conformance of implementations of the computer language BASIC to for the American Minimal BASIC, INSI X3.60-1978. The National Standard Department of Commerce has adopted this ANSI standard as Federal Information Processing Standard 68. By submitting the programs to a candidate implementation, the user can test the various features which an implementation must support in order to conform to the standard. While some programs can determine whether not a given feature is correctly implemented, others produce output which the user must then interpret to some manual describes how the programs should be or degree. This used so as to interpret correctly the results tests. Such interpretation depends strongly on a solid understanding of the of the conformance rules laid down in the standard, and there is a brief discussion of these rules and how they relate to the test programs and to the various ways in which the language may be implemented. Key words: BASIC; language processor testing; Minimal BASIC; programming language standards; software standards; software testing example of many people. the Sheppard, construction of Acknowledgments: Version 2 owes its existence to the efforts and Dr. David Gilsinn and Mr. Charles authors of version 1*, deserve credit for that first system, of which version 2 is a refinement. In addition, they were generous in their advice on many of the pitfalls to avoid on the second iteration. Mr. Landon Dyer assisted with the testing and document preparation. is also important to thank the many people who sent in comments and suggestions on Version 1. We hope that all the users of the resulting Version 2 will help us improve it further. It * issued as an NBS Internal Report; no longer available. |