1. Programmer's Spotlight on
Carl Courtney.
Liberty Basic is develeopped by Carl Gundel Original Newsletter compiled by Alyce Watson and Brosco Translation to HTML: Raymond Roumeas
Contact Carl Coutney: carlcour-@aol.com
In Future Issues:
1. Programmer's Spotlight on
Carl Courtney.Our first Programmer's Spotlight focused on Dean Hodgson, who has been involved with Liberty BASIC for several years. This time, we focus on a relative new- comer, Carl Courtney. Although he was an experienced programmer, Carl first began using LB in October, 1998.
In spite of Carl's recent introduction to the language, his program, Courtney Calendar was named one of the Best LB Programs of 1998! This application is beautifully designed, is packed with useful functions, AND displays Carl's unique sense of humor. Note the PROCRASTINATE button, which automatically moves all of today's chores to tomorrows's TO DO list!
(Get Courtney Calendar at: http://sidebyside.webjump.com/)
Carl is a frequent contributor to the public forums on LB. He shares his coding expertise, answers questions, and asks interesting questions that spawn lively discussions.
Maybe even more importantly, Carl shares his wry wit and self-deprecating sense of humor.
Carl has included a photo of himself. See the attached carlcour.bmp.
Thank you Carl, for sharing your knowlege, and for giving us the gift of laughter!
2. Carl Courtney, in his own
words:First, thanks to all the helpful people in the LB community who make programming and sharing this hobby so wonderful.
I owned a small manufacturing facility in central South Carolina until 1985, when I sold my formulas and processes to a large dental company in West Virginia. Then, I had a lot of time on my hands, and started programming BASIC on my son's TI99-4A -- remember those? 16K! There wasn't much software available. You were expected to write your own.
Since the screen was only 40 characters wide, I first wrote a program that would reformat my documents into 80 characters after typing. That enabled me to type with forty columns so I wouldn't have to "window" from left to write as I wrote. It was high tech around my house, then!
Later, I moved up to DOS and QBASIC -- then onto Windows, but Visual BASIC was a bigger commitment than I was willing to make. Enter Liberty. Thank you Carl G.
I grew up acting in local theater and my son did the same. In the early 90's an agent called me, said he had seen Rand (my son) in a local play and, "Could get him some work."
He turned out to be legit, and Rand works regularly in "supporting cast" and "bit parts" on network TV and feature films. Look for, "Cherry Falls" from the "Scream" producers this fall. Rand plays, "Dennis." Believe it, or not, there's a thriving film industry in this area.
My present job is as spokesman for, "Left Field Productions," a group of film talent around the South east. Our first project is, "Blood Rite" which should be in your video stores in about two years -- and we already have a couple of years in this project.
Recently, I made a significant step toward securing studio backing for my screenplay, "Moonlight Sonata," which will actually be in theaters instead of small, locally owned video stores. It's about time. I'm trying to be cool, but I'm bustin' out all over.
My beautiful wife is Lisa, from Michigan, who learned to cook grits for me. And, my daughter is Cara, who's six and too cute to be true. Rand is 19, so you know how awful that is. Shouldn't he be on his own, now?
Peace and love,
Carl Courtney
3. Simple Data FilesWe've talked a lot about arrays lately, and the next newsletter deals with binary searching of arrays. Here is a technique to fill an array from a simple data text file.
First, set up the array and dimension it to be larger than the estimated number of items of data that will need to be stored there:
DIM DataArray$(500)
The INPUT command will input items from a file one at a time. Items are separated by commas OR carriage returns. If your data includes commas, such as you would see in addresses, use LINE INPUT. With LINE INPUT, items are separated only by carriage returns, not commas.
The following example assumes that "yourfile.txt" consists of strings containing commas, so LINE INPUT is used. "i" is a counter variable that is incremented by one in each loop, and indicates the index of the array element.
The line:
Line input #dfile, Item$
Gets the next item from #dfile and sets the variable, Item$ equal to the input item.
The line:
DataArray$(i)=Item$
Sets the element whose index is "i" in the array to be the input which is stored in the variable, Item$
When the end of the file is reached, eof(#dfile) no longer equals 0, so the conditional statement evaluates to false and the routine drops out of the WHILE/WEND loop and continues at the line after WEND. The file is then closed and the array is sorted. Now, you will be ready to try out the binary searches of arrays that will be the subject of the next newsletter.
DIM DataArray$(500) open "yourfile.txt" for input as #dfile i=0 'index counter While eof(#dfile)=0 'do until end of file is reached i=i+1 'increment index counter Line input #dfile, Item$ 'get next item DataArray$(i)=Item$ 'set array index to be Item$ Wend close #dfile SORT DataArray$(, 1, i
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