Linking basic variables to binary data world

Personal microcomputers have gained unprecedented popularity thanks to the BASIC language handiness. Its use in small data acquisition system encounters, however, two main drawbacks. The first concerns the slow response of the BASIC interpreter implemented in these small systems; the second is due to a very poor communication between the BASIC world and the machine-coded world. All BASIC symbols for variables, arrays or strings which are so easy to handle, remain unknown to the acquisition machine-language program. Moreover, complex mathematical expressions needed for, say, some non linear correction or control, could be managed in BASIC but would be painful to program even in Assembler's language. This paper shows that, using the dynamical variable pointer, one can implement a natural link between the two worlds, allowing powerful features to BASIC's interpreter in data acquisition systems. In particular, A) A machine coded program written for data logging can get access to BASIC variables and directly transfers data to them without suffering interpreters slow speed. BASIC programs just use them as any other variables. B) A manifold user's call, giving control to different machine coded programs without having to change the user's address as usual. (orig.)