And variable names, too ... not sure why OP is reinventing the wheel here.

Yep. I remember moving from the C128 to the Amiga and go ooh.

Still cool that OP is coding their own BASIC interpreter though.

And this one is mine. Built on the ideas that I thought would be cool.

It is not a "visual basic", the code is less complicated, the interpreter is smaller and easier to change, and you get the source code (you do for Gambas too, but Gambas is way more complex)

yeah, that elevator pitch is BASIC as we've known it for 25 years. it has some other neat QOL features though like the C-style string printing

Maybe you don't want it, that's fine. I developed it for myself, but since I enjoy Free Open Source software, I am giving it away to anyone who would like to play with it.

I will consider those, thanks for the input. - I have constrained myself: Each statement starts with a unique letter, just to make parsing a tiny bit easier. Also so far I don't have file input - only output to files - for printing on a printer or sending to gnuplot perhaps. That does not mean I can't have an OPEN "filename",r to replace stdin temporarily.

"Mat $strings(400)" gives you $strings(0) .. $strings(399) just like C, You can do two dimensonal strig arrays also. Please look over the remaining unused letters and let me know how you would integrate DATA statement. Remember, I am keeping the first letter unique.

for string arrays -- MAT $BOX(3,5) == 15 CHARACTERS OR 15 STRINGS ? I think it does the latter already. Note, I am nearly 70 years old - I got "help" coding this. (oh noe here comes a storm)