Release Release 4.7 · dmsc/fastbasic

The new year 2025 release!

This is a long overdue release, with many changes in many areas.

Adds SIO statement
Adds Fujinet support: NOPEN, NCLOSE, NSTATUS and NGET statements, see "nc" and "mastodon" examples.
Support ADR for floating point variables.
Adds %() function.
You can now omit parentheses in string functions, like LEN "X" instead of LEN("X")
You can omit the ; in the PRINT statements in many cases now, for example you can use PRINT "A=" A directly.
New %TIME function that gives the time up to 24 bit precision (wrapping in about 3 days and 5 hours).

Added an integer-only command line compiler, FBCI.
The command line compiler now allows passing the file name in the command line, just use FBC PROG.BAS PROG.COM in the DOS prompt.
A lot of size optimizations to keep the integer IDE at less than 8KB.

Fixes compiling long DLI statements.
Fixes for AND/OR mixing bools and integer operands.
Fixes chaining COLOR() and RTAB() in PRINT statements.
Fixes INPUT to allow reading up to 255 bytes into a string.
Fixes to the IDE when editing long files or files without an EOL at the end, also the IDE should be slightly faster now.

Fixes on Windows cross compiler for filenames with spaces or Unicode characters.
Better error messages:
- show variable names in errors,
- ASCII art with the error location,
- shows errors on missing ending of loops or ifs.
The cross compiler now deletes intermediate files, only keeping the resulting executable.
Adds a command line to write a "compacted" listing from the source, aiding in the writing of ten-liners or other short programs.
The compiler searches for it's files in more than one location now, in this order:
- the FASTBASIC_HOME environment variable,
- the path to the compiler executable,
- the standard OS paths in Linux (/usr/share/fastbasic/ and /usr/local/share/fastbasic/).
This makes easier to install the compiler as an OS tool

Happy New Year 2025!