| FutureBasic | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Paradigm | Procedural |
| Developer | Brilor Software |
| First appeared | mid 1980s |
| Stable release | FutureBasic 7.0.36 October 6, 2025; 4 months ago (2025-10-06) |
| OS | Mac OS |
| License | Freeware |
| Website | www |
FutureBasic is afreeBASICcompiler forApple Inc.'sMacintosh.
It consists of anintegrated development environment (IDE), editor, project manager, etc. for bothIntel andApple Siliconmicroprocessors. Since 1 January 2008, the package has contained a translator, FBtoC, that converts the FutureBasic syntax toC and automatically calls Apple'sclang compiler. No knowledge of C is required. FutureBasic supports access toMac OS library calls.
FutureBasic (FB) began life in the mid-1980s[1] asZBasic, which was created by Andrew Gariepy and envisioned as across-platform development system. Before long, the cross-platform aspects were dropped in favor of focusing on Macintosh development. ZBasic acquired a devoted following of developers who praised its ease of use and the tight, fast code produced by the compiler (a legendary labor involving extensive use of hand-built 68K assembly language code). In 1992 and as the next major step after ZBasic version 5, Zedcor Inc., the company of the Gariepy brothers Andy, Mike, Peter and friends based inTucson,Arizona presented FutureBASIC (later called FBI).[a] In 1995 Staz Software, led by Chris Stasny, acquired the rights to market FutureBasic. Chris Stasny started this business with an upgraded version, namely FBII,[b] and with his own development, the Program Generator[c] (PG PRO), a CASE tool.
The transition from 68k to PowerPCcentral processing unit (CPU) was a lengthy process that involved a complete rewrite of the editor by Chris Stasny and an adaptation of the compiler by Andy Gariepy. The result of their efforts, a dramatically enhanced IDE called FB^3[d], was released in September 1999[e], featuring among many other things a separate compiler application, various open, hence modifiable runtimes,[f] inline PPC assembly, a simplified access to the Macintosh ToolboxApplication Programming Interface (API), as well as an expanded library of built-in functions. Major update releases introduced a full-featured Appearance Compliant[g] runtime written by Robert Purves and theCarbon compliance of generated applications. Once completely carbonized to run natively on theMac OS X, the FutureBASIC Integrated Development Environment (FB IDE) was called FB4 and first released in July 2004.
Based inDiamondhead,Mississippi, Staz Software was severely hit byHurricane Katrina in August 2005 and development pace was slowed at a time when major effort was required to keep the IDE up to date with Apple's evolution towards the Intel-based Macintosh.
In 2007, an independent team of volunteer FB programmers, known as the FBtoC team, developed a translator (FBtoC) that allows FB to generate applications asUniversal Binaries through the use of theopen source GCC compiler which is included with each copy of Apple's Mac OS X system software.
On January 1, 2008, Staz Software announced that FB would henceforth be freeware and FB4 with FBtoC 1.0 was made available.
System requirements for original Macintosh release: Motorola 68000System requirements to create universal binaries with FBtoC: Mac OS X v10.4 or higher, GCC 4.0 or higher, and the Cross-development SDKs must be installed.
FutureBasic syntax supportsprocedural, modular styles of programming usingfunction calls andlocal variables.
User-defined functions (a.k.a. LOCAL FNs in FutureBasic) are much like C orPascal functions.
Specific structures (ENTERPROC/EXITPROC) are used for callback procedures when calling theMacintosh Toolbox.
The language provides the programmer with a complete set of vectors for event-driven applications, such as ON MENU, ON MOUSE, ON DIALOG, ON APPLEEVENT, ON EDIT, ON TIMER, etc.
Other structured keywords include conditional blocks such as:
Legacy BASIC language commands such as:GOTO andGOSUB/RETURN with line numbers and labels - while discouraged - are supported for educational purposes.
An example of a simple program to input a number and display "Hello World" is given below
//Example FutureBasic programdim i,num,a$ //These are our variableswindow 1 //open standard windowinput "Number of loops "; a$ //BASIC input from usernum=val(a$) //convert text to numberlong if num>0 //Structured IF for i = 1 to num //BASIC loop print "hello world" //output text next i //end of loop xelse //Otherwise print "Not today" //no number enteredend ifdo //Wait until Apple-Q HandleEventsuntil ( gFBQuit ) //so that we can see results
FutureBasic supports complex data types include single and double precisionfloating points, double length integers, arrays, strings and records (similar to struct in C). Of note is the DYNAMIC array structures (size ofmemory footprint grows only when used) including DYNAMIC string arrays called INDEX$ and "container" variables which can perform string-like operations on data streams up to 2Gb in size.
Commenting in the code is substantial allowing REMark statements, and C style/* remark */ statements. Sections of code can be bookmarked for easy reference.
Other alternate syntax borrowed from C allows the use of operators such as++ -- == != += -= || &&.
Characters in Pascal strings are accessible much like items of an array:a$[0] (length byte);a$[1] (first character in stringa$).
While the FutureBasic language still supports old style variable typing with suffix identifiers, it provides a modern alternative with the as clause:dimbasbyte;dimsasshort,dimlaslong; etc.
route_toAppleScriptprint"return the path to me as string"route_toScreenlongifusrApplescriptRun(message$)=_noErrprintmessage$endif
// print a calendar for 2009 open "UNIX", 1, "cal 2009" dim a$ do line input #1, a$ print a$ until eof(1) close 1
BeginCFunction// Simple C function to add two integerslongsimple_add(longa,longb){longsum;sum=a+b;return(sum);}endC// Define C function so FB can see ittoolboxfnsimple_add(longa,longb)=long// Create little program to add 2 + 2 with the C functionwindow1printfnsimple_add(2,2)doHandleEventsuntil(gFBQuit)
FutureBasic supports Macintosh Intel and Apple Silicon architectures but does not compile on or for any version of Microsoft Windows.
