50g

Gordon Ayres wrote:
> wondering if anyone has a silver bullet for me? I have programs
> written for HP71 that are in HP basic language.
> 
> Are there any conversion programs to convert to hp50g language?

Never heard of any, unless you count this HP-71B emulator: 
http://www.hrastprogrammer.com/hp71x/index.htm
That would let you run your programs unchanged, but not natively -- the 
emulator must be running, so the programs have no resources available to 
them that are outside the emulator.

It's 100 Euros to buy it.  It works very nicely from what I hear.

I've seen a number of mechanical translators for computer languages on 
the PC, though.  Without exception, the code they produced in the target 
language looked nothing like idiomatic code written in the target 
language; that is, if you had a BASIC-to-C++ translator, the C++ output 
would not tend to look like the C++ code a C++ programmer would write, 
although it might compile and work fine... or not.

HP-BASIC model is procedural with variables and line numbers; it's not 
much like RPL's stack-and-object based model.  A mechanical translation 
would most likely produce very strange-looking code.

Both are quite capable, but since RPL is so central to the way the 50g 
works, I think it's more-or-less imperative to understand it if you ever 
want to use the 50g fluently.  Time-saving aside, I think you're going 
to have to bite the bullet on this one.

Good luck.  Also, in general, if you want a particular piece of 50g 
software, looking on http://www.hpcalc.org is almost always what you 
want to do.  If it's not there, it very rarely is anywhere else either.


-- 
Dave Boyd
               in deterius cadere potest, et olim cecidimus