Sinclair BASIC
| Paradigm | Imperative |
|---|---|
| Designed by | John Grant, Steve Vickers |
| Developer | Nine Tiles Networks, Sinclair Research |
| First appeared | 1979 |
| Platform | ZX80, ZX81, ZX Spectrum |
| License | Proprietary |
Sinclair BASIC is a dialect of the programming language BASIC used in the 8-bit home computers from Sinclair Research and Timex Sinclair. The Sinclair BASIC interpreter was made by Nine Tiles Networks Ltd.
Sinclair BASIC was originally developed in 1979 for the ZX80 by Nine Tiles. The programmers were John Grant, the owner of Nine Tiles, and Steve Vickers.
It was initially an incomplete implementation of the 1978 American National Standards Institute (ANSI) minimal BASIC standard with integer arithmetic only, termed the 4K BASIC (for its ROM size) for the ZX80. It evolved through the floating-point 8K BASIC for the ZX81 and TS1000 (which was also available as an upgrade for the ZX80), and became an almost complete version in the 16 KB ROM ZX Spectrum. It is present in all ZX Spectrum compatibles.
As of 2015, interpreters exist for modern operating systems, and older systems, that allow Sinclair Basic to be used easily.
New BASIC programmers might start with a simple program, perhaps using the language's PRINT statement to display a message on the screen; a well-known and often-replicated example is Kernighan and Ritchie's Hello world program:
On the 16K/48K ZX Spectrum, there are 88 keywords in Sinclair BASIC, denoting commands (of which there were 51), functions and logical operators (32), and other keywords (5):
They are entered via Sinclair's unique keyword entry system. The most common commands need one keystroke only; for example, pressing only P at the start of a line on a Spectrum produces the full command PRINT. Less frequent commands require more complex key sequences: BEEP (for example) is keyed by pressing CAPS SHIFT plus SYMBOL SHIFT to access extended mode (later models include an EXTENDED MODE key), keeping SYMBOL SHIFT held down and pressing Z. Keywords are color-coded on the original Spectrum keyboard to indicate which mode is required.
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