Hello everyone!

I can imagine many, many people are waiting for this post, but yeah, one must be the first to start such project
I want to introduce this program:

ICE - an interpreter/compiler of CE-BASIC

Hooray! It would look like Axe Parser, but then for the newest calculator, the TI-84+CE.
Now are there many people who have questions, about what is possible with it, how long would it take to complete, what are the pros/cons?
Let me answer some questions.

What is ICE?
ICE is an interpreter/compiler of CE-BASIC. Normally, the OS reads a BASIC programs, and compiles it to some ASM commands, and then execute it. ICE does almost the same, but only read it, and compiles it to ASM commands, but instead of executing, it stores them into another program! In that way, you can turn your BASIC program into an ASM one, which is 1000x faster.

Why ICE?
Because I want to make a cool project (and not only games), and I think this program would be very useful for many people, so I decided to give it a try

What is possible with ICE?
I've no details yet, because I'm in an early stage, but I want to make it possible to keep it as BASIC as possible. I mean, you should be able in the future to compile all the BASIC programs to ASM. I never gonna reach that.... Like Axe Parser, it doesn't work with the TI-OS variables, because they are sloooowwwww. Instead, all the variables are in the RAM.

What are the pros and cons of ICE?
You can compile almost all the BASIC programs to ASM, which is 1000x faster. Since the CE has a memory-mapped screen, I'm going to implement a bunch of graph routines as well. A disadvantage is that you're a bit limited with the BASIC commands. I hope I can explain this later

When will you finish it?
In these weeks, I'm busy with school stuff, so I can't really do something with programming. But after that, I hope to finish it as fast as possible. Depending on the difficulties, I hope to finish it in some monts

How works ICE?
The hardest part is to express a string (and eventually store it to a variable). I will implement the Shunting-Yard-Algorithm for that (I will explain later). Once I got that ready, I need to write routines that replaces BASIC commands, like ClrHome would be call _HomeUp / call _ClrTxtShdw or whatever. Once THAT is ready, or enough of them, I will release a beta `

How smart is ICE?
For now, it is pretty smart, and by "smart" I mean, that if you display 2 strings which are exactly the same, it will be only once in RAM, an example:
Disp "ICE","ICE"would be this:
   call _NewLine
   ld hl, _pointer_disp_0
   call _PutS
   call _NewLine
   ld hl, _pointer_disp_0
   call _PutS
   ret

_pointer_disp_0:
   .db "ICE", 0which saves some RAM.

Example of Shunting-Yard-Algorithm:
Let's say I have this code:
F/2+3->AThe algorithm converts this to:
F 2 / 3 + A ->Now I gonna read this sentence, and convert it to this (for example code)
   ld a, (address_of_variable_F)
// Now I now that I need to divide A by 2, which is a power of 2, so just rotate the byte
   or a
   rra
// Now to add 3, which is a value, not a variable
   add a, 3
// Now store it to variable A, so
   ld (address_of_variable_A), aThis is basically how the algorithm works, but then a bit more complicated especially when you have a long string.

Progress:
As some of you may know, it's very hard to work in ASM . That is why I decided to first create this in PHP (that's why I asked how to read .8xp with PHP). After I finished that, I will port it to ASM. I'm now in the stage for developing the Shunting-Yard-Algorithm, which is the main and hardest part.

I know,  there are still a ton of questions, so feel free to ask anything if you don't understand it, or whatever you want to say!




Originally posted on Cemetech: https://www.cemetech.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12616&highlight=