Elementary Statistics and Computer Application

Basic

Beginners’ All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code
The computer needs instructions to perform an operation. Instructions to the computer are provided with the help of a programming language. The language whose design is governed by the circuitry and structure of the machine is known as Machine Language. The computer cannot understand source language (source code) and they need to be translated into the machine language (machine code) with the help of other programs known as compiler or interpreter.
Compiler
A compiler is a program which can translate the BASIC program to machine code. It reads statement by statement and checks for the syntax. If the program has no mistake then it converts the program to machine code and stores it separately.
Interpreter
A program that translates and executes source language statements one line at a time. Compiled programs generally run faster than interpreted programs whereas interpreter translates every time. BASIC is especially designed to be executed by an interpreter.
BASIC Language
BASIC is one of the easiest and simplest high level programming language. BASIC was first designed and developed in the mid of 1960’s at Dartmouth college, U.S.A. under the direction of J.G.Kemeny and T.E.Kurtz. Due to its simplicity and flexibility, its use has spread widely among users.
Statement and Keywords
A statement specifies a step of a program. Every statement consists of some specific BASIC word(s). Such a word is called keyword. For eg. DATA, READ, LET, PRINT etc. A keyword specifies specific information.

A statement is always formed by using a keyword. Generally, the format of any BASIC statement is



Hence l indicates the statement or the line number. It is also referred to as the label of the statement. The value of label must be unsigned integer number and can range from 1 to 99,999.

Eg.: 10 PRINT A,B,C,D