Lesson plan

B32 Business Basic

B32 Business Basic was a competitor to Data General Business Basic written by Murray Haszard. It was released in 1986 for the Data General Eclipse MV line of computers, then Unix (1989) and MS-DOS (1991). It was developed and supported by B32 Software. The B32 interpreter was highly compatible with Data General Business Basic (DGBB), but it also enhanced and extended that language in many ways. Like DGBB, B32 could access Data General's INFOS II database and it could use DGBB's lock server or its own improved version. B32 was over twice as fast for number crunching, string manipulation, and disk I/O. Many of the internal restrictions of DGBB were removed. B32 allowed 32,767 line numbers (65,535 in later versions), compared with DGBB's 9,999. B32 allowed more memory for programs, more simultaneous locks, and more files to be open at once. Language enhancements included a high-speed internal sort routine, do-while blocks, and the ability to step backwards through an indexed file. Debugging facilities were also significantly improved over DGBB. B32 allowed programs to run with full cursor positioning and attribute support on non-Data General terminals, even programs which had Data General control sequences hard-coded into them. B32 carried out all arithmetic at "quad precision", i.e. 64-bit, and emulated the "triple precision" and "double precision" versions of DGBB at runtime.…

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Article summary

B32 Business Basic was a competitor to Data General Business Basic written by Murray Haszard. It was released in 1986 for the Data General Eclipse MV line of computers, then Unix (1989) and MS-DOS (1991). It was developed and supported by B32 Software. The B32 interpreter was highly compatible with Data General Business Basic (DGBB), but it also enhanced and extended that language in many ways. Like DGBB, B32 could access Data General's INFOS II database and it could use DGBB's lock server or its own improved version. B32 was over twice as fast for number crunching, string manipulation, and disk I/O. Many of the internal restrictions of DGBB were removed. B32 allowed 32,767 line numbers (65,535 in later versions), compared with DGBB's 9,999. B32 allowed more memory for programs, more simultaneous locks, and more files to be open at once. Language enhancements included a high-speed internal sort routine, do-while blocks, and the ability to step backwards through an indexed file. Debugging facilities were also significantly improved over DGBB. B32 allowed programs to run with full cursor positioning and attribute support on non-Data General terminals, even programs which had Data General control sequences hard-coded into them. B32 carried out all arithmetic at "quad precision", i.e. 64-bit, and emulated the "triple precision" and "double precision" versions of DGBB at runtime.…

Key claims

  1. release date: 1986 — source: Wikipedia · confidence 0.95

Discussion questions

  1. Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
  2. The record states that the release date is "1986". What evidence would count against this claim?
  3. Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
  4. If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?

Bibliography

  1. Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1351038729

Key claims and bibliography are generated from the same tracked claims and sources as the article page.