This page (revision-270) was last changed on 26-Mar-2023 02:03 by Administrator 

This page was created on 20-Feb-2010 19:16 by Carsten Strotmann

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Version Date Modified Size Author Changes ... Change note
270 26-Mar-2023 02:03 17 KB Administrator to previous
269 26-Mar-2023 02:02 17 KB Administrator to previous | to last
268 26-Mar-2023 02:01 17 KB Administrator to previous | to last
267 26-Mar-2023 02:00 17 KB Administrator to previous | to last ACTION Source Code ==> Action Source Code
266 26-Mar-2023 01:59 17 KB Administrator to previous | to last
265 26-Mar-2023 01:58 17 KB Administrator to previous | to last
264 26-Mar-2023 01:56 17 KB Administrator to previous | to last Remove links to delete manual pages
263 26-Mar-2023 01:22 17 KB Administrator to previous | to last Fix SF links
262 26-Mar-2023 01:21 17 KB Administrator to previous | to last
261 26-Mar-2023 01:18 17 KB Administrator to previous | to last Move manuals to Sourceforge

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Action! is an Atari-specific programming language written by Clinton Parker and sold by Optimized Systems Software (OSS) in ROM cartridge form starting in August 1983. It is perhaps the only 3rd party language (as opposed to [BASIC|Basic] or [assembler]) that had real popularity on the platform and saw any significant coverage in the Atari press; type-in programs and various technical articles were found in most magazines. In comparison, languages like [Forth] and [Logo] saw much less use and almost no press coverage.
Action! is an Atari-specific programming language written by Clinton Parker and sold by Optimized Systems Software (OSS) in ROM cartridge form starting in August 1983. It is the only language other than [BASIC|Basic] and [assembler]) that had real popularity on the platform and saw any significant coverage in the Atari press; type-in programs and various technical articles were found in most magazines. In comparison, languages like [Forth] and [Logo] saw much less use and almost no press coverage.
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Action! uses a greatly cut-down version of the ALGOL syntax, and thus bears strong similarities with [Pascal] and [C]. Like those languages, Action! is procedural, with programs essentially consisting of a large collection of functions that call each other. It lacked encapsulation or data hiding, but that is not a serious concern in the limited program sizes available on an 8-bit machine. Syntactically it looks very similar to Pascal, with the exception that it uses ALGOL 68 DO/OD style bracketing rather than Pascal's BEGIN/END.
Action! uses a greatly cut-down version of the ALGOL syntax, and thus bears strong similarities with [Pascal] and [C], which were also derived from ALGOL. Like those languages, Action! is procedural, with programs essentially consisting of a large collection of functions that call each other. It lacked encapsulation or data hiding, but that is not a serious concern in the limited program sizes available on an 8-bit machine. Syntactically it looks very similar to Pascal, with the exception that it uses ALGOL 68 DO/OD style bracketing rather than Pascal's BEGIN/END.
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Action! included a number of features to allow it to run as fast as possible. Notably, it's main data types were BYTE, INT and CARD, 8-bit and 16-bit signed and unsigned values, respectively. These map directly onto the basic 6502-types. The language also included a syntax to directly refer to these objects in memory so they could be mapped into hardware registers. For instance, one could set a variable to {{BYTE RTCLOK=20}} which defined the 8-bit value at memory location 20 to be the value of the real-time clock. The user could then read or write to that register using the name {{RTCLOK}}. Variables were assigned to memory in procedures, not on a stack, so recursion was not supported internally.
Action! included a number of features to allow it to run as fast as possible. Notably, it's main data types were BYTE, INT and CARD, 8-bit and 16-bit signed and unsigned values, respectively. These map directly onto the basic 6502-types. The language also included a syntax to directly refer to these objects in memory so they could be mapped into hardware registers. For instance, one could set a variable to {{BYTE RTCLOK=20}} which defined the 8-bit value at memory location 20 to be the value of the real-time clock. The user could then read or write to that register using the name {{RTCLOK}}.
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Curiously, Action! did not include support for floating point types, although such support is built into the machine's OS ROM (see [Atari BASIC] for details) and available to any programming language. This is a significant limitation in some roles, although perhaps not for its target market. It also lacked most string handling, but made up for this somewhat with a series of PRINT commands that made formatted output easy.
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Action! had a number of limitations, none of them very serious. Variables were assigned to memory in procedures, not on a stack, so recursion was not supported internally. Curiously, Action! did not include support for floating point types, although such support is built into the machine's OS ROM (see [Atari BASIC] for details) and available to any programming language. This is a significant limitation in some roles, although perhaps not for its target market. It also lacked most string handling, but made up for this somewhat with a series of PRINT commands that made formatted output easy.
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