Data General Extended BASIC

Extended BASIC
Developer(s)	Data General
Initial release	1970; 55 years ago (1970)
Platform	Data General Nova
Type	BASIC
License	Commercial proprietary software

Data General Extended BASIC, also widely known as Nova Extended BASIC, was a BASIC programming language interpreter for the Data General Nova series minicomputers. It was based on the seminal Dartmouth BASIC, including the Fifth Edition's string variables and powerful MAT commands for matrix manipulation. In contrast to the compile-and-go Dartmouth BASIC, Extended BASIC was an interpreter.

To Dartmouth's simple string manipulation system, Extended BASIC added array slicing, which was common on BASICs of the era after its introduction in HP Time-Shared BASIC. It became common in 1980s era microcomputers that did not use Microsoft BASIC, like Sinclair BASIC, Atari BASIC and others. This contrasts with the Microsoft style which uses string functions like LEFT$, and thus makes porting string code to other dialects somewhat difficult.

Data General later purchased rights to a much-expanded BASIC which was released as Data General Business Basic. This added powerful database functionality and largely replaced Extended BASIC on DG platforms.