Does anyone know of a BASIC interpreter that works on Linux (Debian 7)? I am prepared to pay for it.

I have a lot of files that need organizing and I need to write small programs to do these jobs, often only once.

I used "Yabasic" in the past, it was good but it's not available anymore although there is a site for "Yabasic 3" but it is empty. I downloaded another version but it does not work. I tried "bwbasic" which comes with Debian 7 but it does not work, I get "segmentation fault" on the simplest code even though their examples seem to work. There is also "brandy" in Debian 7 but the syntax, and probably the phylosophy, looks completely different, hence an anticipated unnecessary learning curve. I also tried "gambas" but I gave up because of the lack of info and lack of examples of code.

I tried to learn C but I need to split contents of files according to the existence of some characters in strings which I find difficult to do in C.

I do not know "bash" and I have an aversion for anything that is cryptic. I have experience in assembly but it is too slow to program and overkill for my needs.

Can anyone make suggestions? Do I need to stick to C ?

Thank you for your help.

I remember ditching gambas because I found it impossible to do CGI with it but looking at it again from a new perspective it looks like it will do what I need now with simple BASIC statements.

for debian there is a package named sdlBasic. I have no idea if it works well for you, but I think it can be a solution. instead of c you can try java

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``BASIC´´, Debian :

gambas2, gambas3, basic256, bwbasic , libmono-microsoft-visualbasic8.0-cil,
sdlbasic, yabasic, (zmakebas).

Have a look here
http://basic.mindteq.com/index.php?i=linux
http://www.thefreecountry.com/compilers/basic.shtml

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