nsbcomp - A compiler for compiling TI NSpire Basic code from a more portable syntax.

This Python program is an attempt at creating a more portable syntax for writing programs for the TI NSpire CX CAS calculator. The reason I made this simple compiler is that the original NSpire Basic syntax is not too great, since it uses mathematical symbols not included in the standard ASCII character set. There's also a problem with the default NSpire Basic editor: There's no way to paste human readable code that's not originally copied from the default editor without breaking the code and messing up the indentation in the process.

This compiler tries to solve these problems by:

1. Defining a set of symbol shortcuts, such as _s_alpha for the greek letter alpha, that are replaced in the compiled output. These symbol shortcuts can be used by including definition files using the preprocessor system provided by this compiler.
2. Generating the output file in a format that, while virtually unreadable, can be pasted straight into the TI NSpire program editor. Note that the pasted version doesn't include any kind of indentation, but since the source files for this compiler can include indentation, the code can just be edited using a normal text editor or IDE.

Installing

The installation (or configuration) procedure is quite simple. The steps to take are listed below.

1. Install git, Python 2 and GNU Make. On Debian Stretch these can be installed by running the command sudo apt update && sudo apt install git python2.7 make.
2. Download the nsbcomp sources with git by running git clone https://github.com/eerotal/nsbcomp.git in your home directory or in a directory where you want the sources to be placed. This command will create a subdirectory called nsbcomp.git where it downloads the sources.
3. Run cd nsbcomp.git to switch into the downloaded source directory and run make configure.
4. nsbcomp is now ready to be used. There are some usage examples in the section Usage examples in this file.

Command Line Arguments

Option	Explanation
--in/-i	Input file(s). STDIN is used if this is omitted. Multiple files are concatenated.
--out/-o	Output file. STDOUT is used if this is omitted.
--verbose/-v	Print verbose messages to STDOUT.
--preserve-tmp/-p	Preserve created temporary files on exit. Debug flag.
--help/-h	Display a help message.

Usage examples

python nsbcomp/nsbcomp.py -i examples/example.nssrc

• This command compiles the file examples/example.nssrc and outputs the result to STDOUT.

python nsbcomp/nsbcomp.py -i examples/* -o out.nsmin

• This command compiles all of the files in the examples directory and outputs the concatenated result to the file out.nsmin.

License information

This program is licensed under the BSD 3-clause license. You can find the whole license text in the file LICENSE.txt.

Copyright 2017 Eero Talus