Asparagus

See the GitHub repository for more information. The text below was copied from the wiki's syntax page.

Syntax

In Asparagus, commands are all stored as 1 byte unsigned integers (char) in files. That means that instead of having text commands, it’s like machine code: numbers represent commands. There are a possible 256 commands, and more are being added as development progresses.

Commands’ arguments are also stored as 1 byte unsigned integers following the command itself. In addition, some arguments must be literal, but most must represent a variable. That means in one command, the argument FF would mean 255, but in another it would mean the value of variable 255.

When we show commands, arguments, and whole programs, they are shown as hexadecimal.

The table below shows all commands in brief detail. Because of how many commands take variables as an input, whenever we say argument 1, we’re referring to the contents of variable argument 1 unless we specify that the argument is literal.

Command ID	Description
0	Set variable argument 1 to argument 2 (literal) characters succeeding it  (see Variables.)
1	Set variable argument 1 in slot argument 2 (literal) to variable argument 3 in current slot (see Variables.)
2	Set the current variable slot to argument 1 (literal) (see Variables.)
3	Set variable argument 1 to environment variable argument 2 (literal) (see Variables/Environment Variables.)
4	Set environment variable argument 2 (literal) to argument 1* (see Variables/Environment Variables.)
10	If conditional argument 1 (literal) of argument 2* and argument 3* then set argument 4 to “1” (see Math/Conditionals.)
11	Set variable argument 2 to math equation argument 1 (literal) of argument 2* and argument 4* (see Math.)
12	Set variable argument 2 to conversion argument 1 (literal) of argument 3* (see Math/Conversion.)
20	Print argument 3 at screen position argument 1* (literal) x, argument 2* (literal) y.
21	Adds current key press into variable argument 1. Equivalent to INKEY$.
22	Equivalent to input.
30	Sets the command index to argument 1* (see Subroutines/via Goto)
31	If argument 1* is not equal to 0 then goto argument 2.
32	Sets the start of subroutine argument 1 (literal) to position argument 1* (see Subroutines.)
33	Calls subroutine argument 1 (literal) (see Subroutines.)
34	Exits a subroutine/the main program (see Subroutines.)
50	Plays argument 1 as a ML string (see Sound/ML.)
51	Plays argument 1 as a raw sound string (see Sound/Raw.)

*If a number is needed for an argument and the variable used contains non-numeric characters and does not follow the conversion prefixes, it’s value is represented as 0. (see Variables.)

Variables

There are 65536 variables in total, 256 variables in 256 groups. All user variables are treated as strings, but when it needs to be used as a number, it is converted to a float, then converted back. When it is being converted, there are two ways the output could be modified:

• If it follows the conversion prefixes, it can be treated as a number of a different base.
• If it does not follow the conversion prefixes and it contains non-numeric characters (or is empty), it is returned as 0.

The 256 different groups of variables can be switched using command 2, or you can write to it quickly using command 1. All groups are treated as local except for group 255 (see Subroutines.)

System Variables

System variables can be read and written to using commands 3 and 4, respectively. Not all system variables can be written to, however.

There are nine writable system variables:

ID	Description
1	Command location (equivalent to goto)*
3	System time†
4	System date†
5	Program window width
6	Program window height
8	Clipboard‡
9	Program window title
C	Set the error code
FF	The source code of the program (for quines!)•

^*Not recommended, consider using goto instead. ^†May require the interpreter to be run with sufficient permissions. ^‡Only supported on the Windows version due to QB64 limitations. ^•Use at your own risk! Writing to this can cause the program to break, and is extremely hard to debug!

There are an additional 4 read-only environment variables:

ID	Description
0	Current variable slot
2	Number of seconds past midnight
A	Version number of the interpreter (see Using the Interpreter/Version Numbering.)
B	The current operating system being used. It is represented in the following format: [OS][TYPE] where [OS] can be [WINDOWS], [LINUX], or [MACOS] and [TYPE] can be [32BIT] or [64BIT].

Math

Using command 11, you can perform several math operations on a variable. Argument 1 (literal) specifies which operation to do, argument 2 is the variable to hold the output of the math equation, and the following arguments (if any) are the variables to perform the math equation on.

The possible values for argument 1 are:

ID	Description
0	Argument 3 + argument 4
1	Argument 3 - argument 4
2	Argument 3 • argument 4
3	Argument 3/argument 4
4	Argument 3argument 4
5	Argument 3 MOD argument 4
6	Value of argument 3
7	Argument 3 rounded
8	Single-precision random number between 0 and 1
9	Bitwise NOT of argument 3
A	Bitwise AND of argument 3 and argument 4
B	Bitwise OR of argument 3 and argument 4
C	Bitwise XOR of argument 3 and argument 4

Conditionals

Using command 10, you can perform several conditional operations. These are different from the math bitwise operators, as those are bitwise and these are logical. The difference? Instead of comparing the two numbers in binary form, bit by bit, they are compared as one big bit. The “bit” is off only when the variables evaluate to 0, otherwise, they are on. Like the math operations, argument 1 specifies which conditional to perform, argument 2 is the variable to store the output (either 1 if it evaluates to true or 0 if false) and the following are the variables to perform the conditional on.

The possible values for argument 1 are:

ID	Description
0	Argument 3 = argument 4 as strings*
1	Argument 3 AND argument 4
2	Argument 3 OR argument 4
3	Argument 3 XOR argument 4
4	Argument 3 > argument 4*

^*Operation is not bitwise

Conversion

Using command 12 you can convert a number into another number system (hex, octal, binary.) You can also use the conversion prefixes to automatically convert a number to decimal when doing math and such.

In command 12, argument 1 specifies which conversion to perform, argument 2 is the destination variable, and argument 3 is the source. The conversion prefix rules also apply here, as the number is converted to decimal before being converted to another system.

This table shows the possible values for argument 1:

ID	Description
0	Hexadecimal
1	Octal
2	Binary

You might notice that there is no way to convert a number back to decimal. That is because it is done automatically whenever a number is needed. If it is required to obtain a decimal number from another base, you can use command 11 like this: 11 06 (dest) (source)

Prefixes

The conversion prefixes are used to specify that one number is in a certain base system, an will be converted to decimal whenever a number is needed. There are three different prefixes that can be used:

• &H for hex
• &O for octal
• &B for binary

Using the Interpreter

To use the interpreter, you can execute it from the command line in the folllowing way: