BAT-10 is a menu-driven program that performs a lot of interesting
mathematical functions.  BAT-10 is well over ten years old as of
this writing, and so any practical utility it may have once had is
long since superceded by newer software. BAT-10's real strength
lies not in its breadth of functionality, but rather in its
*prose*. Each option in the program has a humorous introductory
paragraph which you just have to read to appreciate.

Be advised that BAT-10's functionality that supposedly
calculates pi to arbitrarily many digits is a complete farse.
I wrote it long before I had any clue how to algorithmically
calculate pi, so all it does is spew out random numbers.
At the time, I thought it was a pretty funny joke. So enjoy
the prose, but don't use BAT-10's pi calculator for anything
serious.  However, the other parts of the program should be
mathematically correct insofar as I am aware. Oh, except for
the calculus part... it's bogus too.

BAT-10 was written in Microsoft QBasic, which was distributed with
MS-DOS 5.0 - where I was introduced to it.  It was and is a fine
language for writing text-based programs; alas the version that
came with MS-DOS 5.0 did not include a compiler. What that means
is that I could distribute the program as source code only, and
hope that people had QBasic installed on their computers.

The following decade changed the playing field somewhat. With the
advent of Windows, Microsoft no longer distributed QBasic with
their operating systems, and QBasic became essentially an
dead product. Imagine my delight when I discovered QB64,
an open source, multi-platform, QBasic-compatible compiler.

Thanks to this compiler, I was finally able to make a self-
contained EXE version of BAT-10. So, it is with great pleasure
that I now present BAT-10 on the Internet for all to enjoy
(or despise, or ignore completely). Naturally, I'm including
the source code in case anyone wants to use it in their own
projects. Reminder: I wrote this a long time ago, so I make
no guarantees with respect to its quality or readability!

To learn more about QB64, visit:
http://www.qb64.net/

Enjoy!

Geoff Draper
2 March 2006

Last updated: 3 Sept 2013. Re-compiled under QB64 for compatibility
with Windows 8. The original MS-DOS executable is still included
under the name bat_dos.exe .  Most users will want to use BAT.exe .
