FreeBASIC 1.10.1 Programming in 14 Days

Fourteen days. One compiler. Every listing compiled, every output captured.

FreeBASIC looks like the BASIC of a home computer and compiles like C. Its Integer is 8 bytes, its records carry padding and its objects carry a hidden pointer, so habits from either side give wrong answers.

Day 1 builds a program from the command line and measures its types. Day 5 starts cardfile, a card index, with one record. Day 7 adds objects and virtual methods. Day 14 assembles cardfile whole: a binary store, an in-memory index, a command shell and its tests.

313 worked examples, each a whole program compiled with fbc 1.10.1. 285 output blocks, each captured from a real run. 314 figures drawn for a black-and-white press. 994 problems over five sets a chapter.

YOUR 14-DAY PATH

Day 1 - The Program and its Types: integer and real types, text, conversion and the three dialects of one compiler.
Day 2 - Deciding and Repeating: If, Select Case, the operators, short-circuit tests and every loop form.
Day 3 - Procedures: Sub and Function, ByVal against ByRef, overloading, defaults and recursion.
Day 4 - Arrays and Strings: fixed and dynamic arrays, bounds, many dimensions, and text taken apart and built.
Day 5 - Types of Your Own: records, the padding inside them, unions, enums, methods and properties.
Day 6 - Pointers and Memory: addresses, pointer types, New and Delete, Allocate, and pointers to procedures.
Day 7 - Objects: Extends, Virtual, Abstract, the vtable measured in bytes, operators and copying.
Day 8 - Modules and Scope: Include, headers, namespaces, public and private, a library and the build line.
Day 9 - When Things Go Wrong: runtime errors, the checks and their cost, On Error, Assert and cleaning up.
Day 10 - Files: text, random-access and binary files, and what each one writes to the disk.
Day 11 - The Preprocessor: Define and Macro, conditional compilation, guards and compile-time asserts.
Day 12 - Testing and Measuring: a test runner in forty lines, table-driven tests, timing and a caught regression.
Day 13 - Talking to C and the System: names in the object file, the C runtime, strings and bytes across it, threads.
Day 14 - One Whole Program: cardfile assembled from its record, index, store, commands, reports and tests.

WHO IT IS FOR. Programmers who have written a program in any language and want FreeBASIC taught as a compiled language. Students and interview candidates who need to know what the compiler actually does. Not needed: C, object-oriented programming or an IDE. A text editor and the free fbc compiler are the whole toolchain.

Download book source code from: {GitHub}/{mohammadnsaqib}

450 pages, black and white.