This Standard ECMA-55 is designed to promote the interchangeability of BASIC programs among a variety of automatic data processing systems. Subsequent Standards for the same purpose will describe extensions and enhancements to this Standard. Programs conforming to this Standard, as opposed to extensions or enhancements of this Standard, will be said to be written in "Minimal BASIC".

This Standard establishes:

• The syntax of a program written in Minimal BASIC.
• The formats of data and the precision and range of numeric representations which are acceptable as input to an automatic data processing system being controlled by a program written in Minimal BASIC.
• The formats of data and the precision and range of numeric representations which can be generated as output by an automatic data processing system being controlled by a program written in Minimal BASIC.
• The semantic rules for interpreting the meaning of a program written in Minimal BASIC.
• The errors and exceptional circumstances which shall be detected and also the manner in which such errors and exceptional circumstances shall be handled.

Although the BASIC language was originally designed primarily for interactive use, this Standard describes a language that is not so restricted.

The organization of the Standard is outlined in Appendix 1. The method of syntax specification used is explained in Appendix 2.

This user manual will guide you through the basic concepts of BASIC and teach you how to write programs in BASIC. Even if you have no previous programming experience, you will be able to follow this manual and create your own programs in no time.