Hello everyone, 
I developed a method to compress short texts by reducing 8-bit characters to 7-bit. While the compression ratio is low for large files, it efficiently reduces small strings. 

Key Steps: 

1. Normalization: The input text is restricted to 7-bit ASCII (32–127).
   
2. Offset Adjustment: Each character is decremented by 32 to fit within 0–95. 
   
3. Compression: 
   For every 8 bytes, extract bits 0–6 (discarding bit 7).Pack these 7-bit segments into 7 bytes, using all 8 bits per byte. 
   
4. Remaining Bytes: If the text length isn’t a multiple of 8, the last 1–7 bytes are copied uncompressed.
   
5. Decompression: 
   Reverse the process: Expand 7-bit segments to 8 bits, then increment by 32. 
   

Source code moved from PB DOS over here, in reply to @Andy Dee:

'DECLARE not needed if FUNCTION source is before the CALL
'here the CALL is in PBMAIN
'I call it bottom up because PBMAIN is last and flow goes up
'
'Pretty sure PUSHes and POPs not needed in FUNCTION
'They will be needed to use "inside" code in-line with BASIC
'
'Used PBCC v6 to test. I no longer have PBDOS available.
function Tage_im_Februar(byval iJahr as integer) as integer
  local FebruarTage as integer
  ! push ax
  ! mov FebruarTage, 28&  'not a leap year, pre-set to 28
  ! mov ax, 1582%
  ! cmp ax, iJahr
  ! jge Julian
  ! mov ax, 3%
  ! and ax, iJahr    'conditionally equivalent MOD 4
  ! jz MOD100        '0 is possible leap year
  ! jmp Done
  MOD100:
  ! push bx          'for divisor
  ! push dx          'for high part of dividend, remainder (MOD)
  ! xor dx, dx
  ! mov ax, iJahr
  ! mov bx, 100%
  ! div bx
  ! cmp dx, 0%    'does MOD 100 = 0 ?
  ! pop dx
  ! pop bx
  ! jz MOD400        '0 is possibly not a leap year
  ! jmp Is29Days      'non 0 is a leap year
  MOD400:
  ! and ax, 3%    'EAX has Year\100, so conditionally equivalent MOD 400
  ! jnz Done
  Julian:
  ! mov ax, 3%
  ! and ax, iJahr
  ! jnz Done
  Is29Days:
  ! mov FebruarTage, 29%
  Done:
  ! pop ax
  function = FebruarTage
end function
function pbmain () as long 'put only to demonstrate Tage_im_Februar
  local iJahr as integer
  iJahr = 2000
  print Tage_im_Februar(iJahr); " 2000, divisible by 400, is leap"
  iJahr = 2100
  print Tage_im_Februar(iJahr); " 2100, divisible by 100 not 400, not leap"
  iJahr = 2104
  print Tage_im_Februar(iJahr); " 2104, divisible by 4 not 100, is leap"
  iJahr = 2103
  print Tage_im_Februar(iJahr); " 2103, not divide 4, not leap
  print "julian, did not check rule for prior to Gregorian myself"
  iJahr = 1204
  print Tage_im_Februar(iJahr); " 1204, divisible by 4, is leap
  iJahr = 1201
  print Tage_im_Februar(iJahr)  " 1201, not divisible by 4, not leap
  waitkey$
end function

Here, Dale Yarker shows a fast Way to find a Leap Year.

This looks very nice - for 32-Bit Systems.

Programming in 16-Bit PB 3.5  for DOS, I can only make   eyes… 

I use a much slower routine, calculating results for julian and gregorian calendar.

Hello everyone

In a text block commented out with $If 0 - $EndIF, the control character "→" appears at some point. This causes PB 3.5 to assume that the file ends here, which is acknowledged with error 436 during compilation.
There used to be this bug with the "ü", but it was fixed quite quickly.
Perhaps of interest and use to someone.

Andy

Edit:
Dieser Fehler tritt auch beim Auskommentieren mit "'" oder "Rem" auf.

Edit 2 (sorry for German language):
This error also occurs when commenting out with “'” or “Rem”.

Hello to all, especially to the Admin,

do you see a chance, to turn the http://… to a more secure https://… ?

Wish us all the very best,
Andy

Greetings ....

Found this purely by chance ....

From March 24th 2003, a 53-minute podcast interview by PowerBASIC's Bob Zale, as well as PDQ creator Ethan Winer.

The interview can be downloaded as an mp3 audio file -- just click-on the three dots to the right of the playback field and choose DOWNLOAD.

Here's the link -- Net Rocks Podcast: March 24th 2003

Thanx-A-Lot, Frank

Hi @all

Today I have created an new sub-forum Alternatives to PowerBASIC. Here we can discuss alternatives to the PowerBASIC compiler.

Also I have done some housekeeping. You will see the prefix "Moved". I have moved some threads to the proper place. Please take care when creating a new thread. Thank you!

Cheers,
Albert

I have listed some pertinent codes on detecting Virtual Machines, these are :

Detect QEMU Virtual Machine
http://pump.richheimer.de/showthread.php...160#pid160


Detect Hyper-V Virtual Machine
http://pump.richheimer.de/showthread.php...159#pid159

Detect WINE emulator
http://pump.richheimer.de/showthread.php...146#pid146

Detect the Virtual Box Virtual Machine
http://pump.richheimer.de/showthread.php...143#pid143

This thread forms the discussions for these codes, if you encounter detections through
the use of these programs or not able to detect , please let me know.

These VM and emulator are commonly used in the Windows and Linux platforms
by users who can pirate your programs,  therefore detections are vital to
discourage the use of VM to pirate your products. 

Once a VM is detected, just stop the program and exit.  Or  make it GPF 
or do something irrelevant to make it difficult for them to make copies of your programs ?

This program will detect if it is being run in a QEMU  Virtual Machine VM.
Note that hackers will place your programs to run in a VM so that they can
pirate or hack your programs.  

This is to detect whether the user is using a QEMU  VM and to do the 
necessary counter action.   

Please let me know if you encounter issue with this program.