The newest, leanest and the meanest is here!

[Ed Price]

First published on MSDN on Jun 16, 2009

Authored by Vijaye Raji

The next installment of the Small Basic Community Previews is now available for download.  Version v0.5 can be downloaded at: http://download.microsoft.com/download/C/A/F/CAF9E062-94D3-4003-80D9-44CDF7EC7BD9/SmallBasic.ms...

This version adds more of the community requested features and bug-fixes, the full list of it is below:

• 
  Arrays:Small Basic now has native support for arrays.  Array keys are not limited to numbers, and the arrays themselves can be multidimensional.  An example is:

people[1]["Name"]["First"] = "Carl"
people[1]["Name"]["Last"] = "Fredrickson"
people[1]["Age"] = 78

• 
  Uninitialized Variables:The Compiler now catches and reports as error, any variable that isn't initialized but is being used in the program.  This makes it much easier to catch misspelt variables.




• 
  Spanish localization:The UI and the API reference have been translated to Spanish, and is now available alongside English and French.  The Guide will follow in a couple days.
  
  
  
• 
  Environment Features:* Find feature : Ctrl+F brings up the new Find dialog, F3 finds the next match
  * Line and column indicator : At the bottom right of the editor is a line and column indicator
  * Save As command + toolbar button
  * Format Program command: Available from the context menu in the editor, this command reformats the entire program with the right indentation.
  * Mouse click and scroll support for Intellisense list box




• 
  Under the hood:* A new attribute "HideFromIntellisense" which hides deprecated operations and properties from the Intellisense list




• 
  Others:* Tons of bug fixes
  * Smaller footprint (installer is now just 3.7MB)
  * Setup now auto-detects presence of .Net framework 3.5 SP1