A couple of questions

[Kenneth Wayne Boyd]

Sorry, these are probably user error.

1. I tried to run the BASCODER.BAS program that is in the /data directory on the windows install, and also in the /pcbasic/basic/programs directory in the source download. On trying to run it I get the error message "Undefined line number in 9"... which is a "9 GOTO 1000 ' Initialize client" statement. The last line in the program is 955.
   Is this a program that you intended to be able to be run? If there is an easter egg somewhere ... I haven't looked too deeply in searching for it.

2. After the normal "pain" associated with getting a development environment running, I have the PC-BASIC source downloaded and running. I was hoping to have an alternate environment for looking for the elusive program crash. When I start PC-BASIC from a IDE environment it starts normally. This is the custom run command:

C:\Python27\ansipipe-launcher.exe python.exe C:\Users\Ken\DOCUME~1\LICLIP~1\PC-BASIC\PCBASI~1\pcbasic.py

Working directory: C:\Users\Ken\Documents\LiClipse Workspace\PC-BASIC\pcbasic-master

The above works.

However, when I start it from a Administrator authorrized command prompt, I get the following:

C:\Python27>echo %pythonpath%
C:\PYTHON27;C:\PROGRA~2\PC-BAS~1\PCBASI~1

C:\Python27>ansipipe-launcher.exe c:\python27\python.exe c:\users\ken\docume~1\l
iclip~1\pc-basic\pcbasi~1\pcbasic.py
ERROR: Direct statement in file

But... if I enter:
C:\Python27>ansipipe-launcher.exe python.exe c:\users\ken\docume~1\l
iclip~1\pc-basic\pcbasi~1\pcbasic.py

It works.

But what I "think" I really want to do is start ansipipe from the "C:\Program Files (x86)" directory.
(To get the same effect as running the installed PC-BASIC from the C:\Program Files (x86)" directory.and run Python from the normal c:\python27 directory

C:\PROGRA~2\PC-BASICnPgmFiles\pcbasic-master>ansipipe-launcher.exe c:\python27\p
ython.exe pcbasic.py
ERROR: Direct statement in file

C:\PROGRA~2\PC-BASICnPgmFiles\pcbasic-master>ansipipe-launcher.exe python.exe pc
basic.py
ERROR: Could not create process python.exe pcbasic.py
C:\PROGRA~2\PC-BASICnPgmFiles\pcbasic-master>

This is probably totally user error on my part.

Thanks
Ken

[Rob Hagemans]

Hi Ken,

1. BASCODER is not a complete program - it is meant to be run merged with a program file in BASICODE, a portable subset of BASIC that was popular in Northwestern Europe in the 1980s/90s. See http://robhagemans.github.io/pcbasic/doc/#cassette

2. Congratulations on getting through the pain of setting up a Python environment on Windows! I'm surprised by the Direct statement in file which implies that that command manages to run PC-BASIC but somehow also tries to load a file that isn't a BASIC program. From the command itself I can't quite see why this happens, even less why it doesn't happen if you call the python executable without a path specification. Are there any stray spaces on your original command line? I notice that both command lines seem to have a line break at the same strange location (after the l of liclip~1, is that just a consequence of copy-paste from the terminal or is there something going on there? Either way, Direct statement in file is a BASIC error and therefore indicates that PC-BASIC did start. Somehow it is being fed an unexpected argument that I can't see on your command line; there is probably some weirdness going on with teh way the Windows commandline parses path specifications with spaces in them. I'll have to check that.

The final error is an AnsiPipe error, suggesting that what follows ansipipe-launcher.exe is not correct. Is there a pcbasic.py in your directory C:\PROGRA~2\PC-BASICnPgmFiles\pcbasic-master ? What happens if you just run python.exe pcbasic.py from that location (without paths and without anispipe)?

Also note that the master branch of the code has diverged quite a bit from the last release version, which is in the release-15.08 branch. The latter is the one you've been using if you installed PC-BASIC from the downloaded .exe installer.

If you manage to reproduce the crash with sound it would be very interesting to know whether it happens in both the master version and the release-15.08 branch or only in the latter. If only the latter, then I think I know whatthe cause is.

Thanks
Rob