originally developed by
Bill Gates in a garage back in the
CP/M days. It was originally known as GWBasic, then QBASIC
and finally MS-BASIC.
the GWBASIC.EXE or BASICA.EXE interpreters. GWBASIC ("Gee
compatible with earlier BASICs.
QBASIC was more sophisticated. Version 4.5 had a full screen
editor, debugger and compiler. The compiler could also
produce executable files but to run these a utility program
(BRUN44.EXE) had to be present. Thus
source code could be
kept private.
From DOS 5.0 or 6.0 onward, MS-BASIC was standard.
Current version: 1.1, also produces
stand-alone executables
and can display graphics.
[Relationship to BASIC in ROM on first IBM PC?]
(1995-05-12)