[WalterBright]

The parsing, even if line by line as necessary, is still compiling.

[vidarh]

In 45 years of writing software, I've never before seen anyone call tokenizing a BASIC program compilation. It's decidedly not common usage.

[WalterBright]

I've been writing compilers for 45 years now. Tokenizing is a big part of every textbook on compilers. To resolve expressions (which are recursive in nature) it would have had to do more than just tokenizing. While this isn't hard at all, it's "parsing" which is also qualifying it as a compiler.

I.e. the basic program was lexing and parsing. It's a compiler. A very simple one, sure, but a compiler.

[vidarh]

Yes, but tokenization on its own is not compilation any more than whiskers are a cat just because a cat has them.

"Nobody" uses it that way, and language is defined by use.

[jacquesm]

Compilers generate code in another, usually lower level language that is executed by reading all of the code that could be executed first. Interpreters (such as the BASIC interpreter we are discussing here) read only that part of the code that gets executed and typically call functions rather than that they generate code (never mind JIT). Tokenization prior to interpretation is technically an optional step (it's just an efficiency boost) and is not normally confused with compilation even if there are some superficial similarities.

You of all people should know this, come on.

[WalterBright]

You and I have a different point of view.

[jacquesm]

Of all the hills you could die on this one seems really silly.

[lproven]

I have to agree. This is a very very odd objection, and it does not match up with my ~40 years of study of this industry, including WB's work.