BBC BASIC Programmers' Reference

What is a library and why are libraries important?

• Library (Wikipedia)
• Code reuse (Wikipedia)

• Checking if a library is INSTALLed
• Commenting library code
• Distributing crunched libraries
• Guide to writing libraries
• Fixing a 'Bad library' error
• Preventing a library from being run
• Using DATA statements in libraries

• ARRAYLIB - Array and matrix functions
• ASMLIB - Assembler extensions (CMOV and SSE)
• ASMLIB2 - More assembler extensions (SSE2)
• CALLBACK - Use Windows API functions which require a callback routine
• CLASSLIB - Support for Object Classes (includes examples of use)
• COMLIB - Accessing COM automation (ActiveX) controls
• D3DLIB - Direct3D8 graphics
• D3DLIBA - Direct3D8 graphics (with additional camera roll-angle parameter)
• D3D9LIB - Direct3D9 graphics
• D3D9LIBA - Direct3D9 graphics (with additional camera roll-angle parameter)
• DATELIB - Calendar functions
• ELLIPSE - Plotting angled ellipses
• EVENTLIB - Synchronous dispatch mechanism for ON MOUSE, ON MOVE, ON SYS and ON TIME events
• FNUSING - Formatting and conversion
• GDIPLIB - Antialiased graphics
• HQSOUND - High Quality sound patch
• MDILIB - Multiple Document Interface
• MULTIWIN - Multiple output windows
• NOWAIT - Replacement functions that don't stall interrupts
• SOCKLIB - Socket (network) connections
• SORTLIB - Sorts data arrays
• SORTSALIB - Sorts arrays of structures (beware of different calling syntax)
• SPRITELIB - Sprites
• STRINGLIB - String functions
• SUBCLASS - Intercept and process Windows messages
• TIMERLIB - Multiple single-shot or periodic timers which call a specified BASIC PROCedure
• WINLIB - Toolbars and status bars
• WINLIB2 - Dialogue boxes
• WINLIB2A - Dialogue boxes with context-sensitive help
• WINLIB3 - Trackbars and progress bars
• WINLIB4 - Property sheets and wizards
• WINLIB5 - Boxes and buttons
• WINLIB5A - Boxes and buttons with specified parent window
• XMLLIB - Parse XML files

ArrayIO - Jon Ripley ArrayIO provides routines to write entire arrays to a file and read them back again.

BB4WMAPM - Christos Stogiannopoulos The BB4WMAPM library provides an interface between the BBC BASIC for Windows programming language and the MAPM arbitrary precision mathematics library.

BOX2DLIB - Richard Russell Used in conjunction with BOX2D221.DLL and (optionally) BOX2DDBG.BBC, which are contained in the ZIP file, provides access to the Box2D Physics Engine.

CardLib - Jon Ripley CardLib provides an interface to the Windows cards library used by all the card games supplied with Windows.

Date - J.G.Harston The Date library provides functions for converting dates between a 5-byte centi-second count and real-world date and time values. It replicates the functionality of the RISC OS SWIs Territory_ConvertOrdinalsToTime and Territory_ConvertDateAndTime.

DrawLib - Chris Hall & Chris Dennis Two libraries DrawLib and ShowDraw used to create and display Acorn Draw format files on Windows.

FORTHLIB - Richard Russell Incorporate subroutines written in Forth in your BASIC program. Forth is much faster than BASIC, but easier to learn than assembly language.

gdip_image - Hans van der Hoeven This library makes it very easy to display images or part of images in your window, using GDI+. It gives a very good quality scaling. This demo program gdip_image_demo.bbc explains the use of and demonstrates the possibilities of the library.

HASHLIB2 - Michael Hutton Calculates the MD2, MD4, MD5, SHA or SHA-1 hash of a file or a block of data in memory.

HASHLIB3 - Michael Hutton As HASHLIB2 but additionally calculates the SHA-256, SHA-384 or SHA-512 hash.

HIMELIB - Richard Russell Interfaces to the Huge Integer Math and Encryption library.

LoadDLL - Jon Ripley LoadDLL provides a simple and fast interface for accessing functions provided by DLLs (Dynamic Link Libraries).

MAlloc - Jon Ripley Memory allocation library (using the Windows API). Provides functions for memory allocation, reallocation and freeing.

MAlloc - J.G.Harston Memory allocation library (using BBC BASIC's heap). Provides functions for memory allocation, reallocation and freeing.

ODBCLIB - Richard Russell Supports accessing an ODBC-compliant database (for example SQLite) . The Zip file include a test/demonstration program illustrating its use.

ONCOMLIB - Richard Russell Provides an ON COM style facility which will call a specified procedure if an event occurs on a serial communications port.

ReadArgs - Jon Ripley Used to parse command line parameters passed to a program and returns the number of parameters and an array containing the parameters themselves. Contains a convenient lexical analyser.

ReadLine - Jon Ripley The ReadLine library provide several flexible functions that replace the INPUT statement. Includes a full line editor with common keyboard shortcuts, clipboard support, cloaked input and a configurable line history buffer.

SPLASHSCREEN - Michael Hutton Create a Splashscreen for your program from a jpeg, bmp, windows metafile or icon file. Supports multiple monitors.

SQLite3 - Jon Ripley Allows SQLite databases to be created and manipulated from BB4W programs.

Win/Keyboard - J.G.Harston The Win/Keyboard library provides functions to replace GET and INKEY that return regular unique top-bit-set values for function and editing keys, and returns distinct values for keys pressed with Shift, Control and Alt.

Win/Reg - J.G.Harston The Win/Reg library provides simple functions to read and write strings in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER part of the registry.

Win/Registry - J.G.Harston The Win/Registry library provides functions to read and write data in any part of the system registry.