Abstract: This publication describes the set of programs developed by NBS for the purpose of testing conformance of implementations of the computer language BASIC to the American National Standard for Minimal BASIC, ANSI X3.60-1978. The 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 or not a given feature is correctly implemented, others produce output which the user must then interpret to some degree. This manual describes how the programs used SO as to interpret correctly the tests. Such interpretation depends depends strongly on solid understanding 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. results should be Key words: BASIC; language processor testing; Minimal BASIC; programming language standards; software standards; software testing 1*, Acknowledgments: Version 2 owes its existence to the efforts and ex am ple of many people. Dr. David Gilsinn and Mr. Charles Sheppard, the authors of version deserve credit for construction of 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. It is al so 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. * issued as an NBS Internal |