REALbasic

REALbasic (RB) is an object-oriented dialect of the BASIC programming language developed and commercially marketed by REAL Software, Inc in Austin, Texas for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, and Linux.

History

REALbasic was created by Andrew Barry. It was originally called CrossBasic due to its ability to compile the same programming code for Mac OS and Java (although the integrated development environment was Mac only). In 1997 CrossBasic was purchased by FYI Software which renamed it REALbasic as well as renaming the company REAL Software. At this time they dropped the Java target, later replacing it with a Windows target and database support. The IDE is now available for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux and can compile applications for Windows (Windows 2000 and higher), Macintosh OS X (PowerPC, Intel, and Universal Binary) and x86 Linux.

Language features

RB is a strongly-typed language with minimal automatic type conversion, which supports single inheritance and interfaces, class methods and class properties, automatic memory management via reference counting, and operator overloading. A very important feature is the ability to extend (not just inherit from) existing classes, like Objective-C Categories. This considerably reduces the need for the Abstract Factory Pattern, which complicates using Application Frameworks in Java and C++. REALbasic 2007 Release 3 includes namespace support, which allows modules to contain classes, interfaces and other modules, while REALbasic 2007 Release 4 added support for delegates. The latest version of REALbasic (2008 Release 1) added support for introspection.

Framework features

As described in the language reference, its built-in framework supports (REAL Software 2006):

• dictionaries,
• Visual Basic datatypes compatibility,
• full Unicode support,
• regular expressions,
• application programming interface calls to compiled C libraries on all supported platforms,
• ActiveX and basic OLE support (on Windows); COM objects are not fully supported,
• Notification icons (on Windows),
• Windows registry (on Windows),
• cooperative threads,
• scripting language embedded in REALbasic programs through RBScript,
• XML parsing and generation,
• console and service application support (Professional edition only)
• Apple events (on Mac),
• Address book (on Mac),
• Keychain (on Mac),
• Spotlight (on Mac),
• Resource Forks (on Mac),
• QuickTime (on Mac and Windows),
• sound,
• real-time 3D graphics,
• serial communications,
• sockets (both TCP, UDP and Inter-process_communication),
• SSL (Professional edition only),
• HTTP, POP3, SMTP and SOAP

The framework functionality can also be extended by creating plugins using the Plugin SDK provided by REAL Software. Plugins are created using C/C++ with a variety of supported compilers, including Metrowerks Code Warrior, Microsoft Visual Studio, gcc and Xcode. Plugins can support any platform REALbasic supports, but are not required to support all platforms.

File format

The source file format contains window and control placement data and is proprietary, although XML import and export are supported. All source code can be contained in one project file, but it is also possible to have classes/modules in separate files in the same way as most other languages or dialects can. REALbasic compiles directly to machine language for each platform that it supports. REALbasic 2006 Release 3 and newer also supports a human-readable version control format which allows easy collaboration with tools such as Subversion or CVS.

Current editions of IDE

There are two versions of the IDE:

• The professional edition can compile programs for Mac OS X (PowerPC Carbon Mach-O, i386 Carbon Mach-O and Universal Binary), Linux and Windows from the same source code file; it can also access databases (Oracle, PostgreSQL, ODBC, etc.) including the built-in single-user REAL SQL Database engine based on SQLite; it compiles console applications, can remote debug and has numerous other features.
• The standard edition only compiles programs for the platform that the IDE is running on (either Windows, Linux or Mac), and does not allow access to databases other than the built-in REAL SQL Database.

IDE features

Both versions of the IDE permit building the application's graphical user interface by dragging the controls from a toolbar to their parent window. Layout of the controls is helped by the IDE that permits aligning them (both horizontally and vertically), and which gives information about the distance between controls, or between a control and the window borders.

Like many modern IDEs, the code editor supports customizable syntax highlighting, autocompletion and refactoring tools. The IDE also includes editors for menus and database schema as well as viewers for multimedia files such as pictures, movies or sounds.

With REALbasic 2006 Release 1 and higher, the IDE gives you access to scripting features via RBScript. This allows you to control the IDE for doing automated tasks such as running regression tests or doing nightly builds. The scripts can either be global or project-specific.

One major new feature of REALbasic 2007 Release 2 is incremental compilation, whereby the compiler only needs to recompile the parts of your project which have been modified. For instance, if you only modify the body of a method, then just the project item containing that method is recompiled (instead of your entire application).

Example code

This is an example of operator overloading for a hypothetical Complex class which permits to sum a real to a complex number, and to sum two complex numbers:

Function Operator_Add (rhs as Single) As Complex
 Dim ret As New Complex
 ret.R = Self.R + rhs
 ret.I = Self.I
 Return ret
End Function

Function Operator_Add (rhs as Complex) As Complex
 Dim ret As New Complex
 ret.R = Self.R + rhs.R
 ret.I = Self.I + rhs.I
 Return ret
End Function

The same function can be defined to accept Double datatype values. This code shows how to use the Complex class to sum a real with a complex number:

Dim First As New Complex (0, 1)
Dim Second As New Complex (1, 1)
Dim Sum As Complex
Sum = First + 5.0 + Second
// Sum will be (6, 2)

See also

Comparable Basic Dialects

• RBScript - related scripting language
• Gambas - a free approach to object basic

Other Programming Languages

• Comparison of programming languages

References

• Smith, Tony (September 13 2005). RealBasic 2005 for Mac, Windows and Linux. The Register. Retrieved on 2006-04-11.
• Barr, Joe (August 4 2005). Review: REALBasic 2005 for Linux. Linux.com. Retrieved on 2006-04-11.
• REAL Software (April 10 2006). REALbasic Language Reference. REAL Software. Retrieved on 2006-04-11.
• Tejkowski, Erick (2001). REALbasic for Dummies. Hungry Minds. ISBN 0764507931.

External links

• REAL Software, Inc., makers of REALbasic
• REALbasic forums, Official REALbasic discussion forums
• Really Basic REALbasic, introducing programming and REALbasic to beginners
• RB Garage, an open repository listing plugins, classes, modules, code examples etc.
• REALbasic Developer Magazine, a bi-monthly magazine about REALbasic development
• RBLibrary, a commercial resource of third party articles and tutorials
• REALDev, a wiki-powered developer community and code repository
• RBDevZone, a community for professional REALbasic developers
• declareSub.com, code, articles, and a book on declares
• REALbasic Wiki, independent effort to extend REALbasic documentation
• RBtv, videocasts

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