Case study

PC-BASIC: a GW-BASIC-family interpreter

A cross-platform interpreter for GW-BASIC, BASICA, PCjr Cartridge BASIC, and Tandy 1000 GWBASIC. Release v2.0.8 is commit 6a3a035b0a1c1029d48bc9284e642b6b4bd64fb5; the shipped program tests/basic/gwbasic/PRINT_USING_scientific/TEST.BAS is compared byte for byte with model/OUTPUT.TXT.

Targets: App
Category: Independent reconstruction cases
Relationship: Independent reconstruction project
Sources reviewed: 2026-11-03

Stars: 473
Last commit: 2026-07-12
Language: Python

GitHub data as of 2026-11-09

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Requirements & limits

Scope: The README calls PC-BASIC a free interpreter for those four BASIC dialects, aiming for bug-for-bug compatibility, running .BAS programs, and using Microsoft Binary Format floating point. Tag v2.0.8 points at commit 6a3a035b0a1c1029d48bc9284e642b6b4bd64fb5. Desktop installers are published on that GitHub release.
Testing evidence: At that commit, tests/basic/gwbasic/PRINT_USING_scientific/TEST.BAS is 362 bytes. PCBASIC.INI in the same directory sets run=TEST.BAS and quit=True. The oracle model/OUTPUT.TXT is 82 bytes. tests/basic/testbasic.py compares each model file with filecmp.cmp and shallow=False, a full byte compare.
License: The README says the program is released under GPL version 3. LICENSE.md grants the GNU GPL version 3 or, at the recipient’s option, any later version.

Cite

BibTeX

@misc{pcbasic-interpreter-case,
  title = {{PC-BASIC: a GW-BASIC-family interpreter}},
  howpublished = {\url{https://github.com/robhagemans/pcbasic}},
  url = {https://github.com/robhagemans/pcbasic},
  urldate = {2026-11-03},
  note = {Awesome REA entry: \url{https://awesomerea.org/resources/pcbasic-interpreter-case/}}
}

Plain text

PC-BASIC: a GW-BASIC-family interpreter. https://github.com/robhagemans/pcbasic (accessed 2026-11-03). Awesome REA entry: https://awesomerea.org/resources/pcbasic-interpreter-case/

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Primary sources

README.md GitHub · robhagemans/pcbasic · Revision 6a3a035
tests/basic/gwbasic/PRINT_USING_scientific/TEST.BAS GitHub · robhagemans/pcbasic · Revision 6a3a035
tests/basic/gwbasic/PRINT_USING_scientific/PCBASIC.INI GitHub · robhagemans/pcbasic · Revision 6a3a035
tests/basic/gwbasic/PRINT_USING_scientific/model/OUTPUT.TXT GitHub · robhagemans/pcbasic · Revision 6a3a035
tests/basic/testbasic.py GitHub · robhagemans/pcbasic · Revision 6a3a035
LICENSE.md GitHub · robhagemans/pcbasic · Revision 6a3a035