This standard deals with software for the CAMAC modular instrumentation and interface system of ANSI/IEEE Std 583-1975, Modular Instrumentation and Digital Interface System (CAMAC)(also Report EUR 4100e of the Commission of the European Communities). The report on which this document is based, ERDA Report TID-26619, was prepared by the NIM Committee* of the United States Energy Research and Development Administration (now the Department of Energy)and the ESONE Committee** of European Laboratories. The corresponding ESONE document is ESONE/RTB/02.IEEE Std 726-1979 differs from the corresponding ESONE document ESONE/RTB/02 and US Energy Research and Development Administration document TID-26619 in the following respects:(1) The keyword RECEIVE is used in place of the keyword READ for process input.(2) The section on interrupt handling is not included. In particular, reference to the WHEN statement to link an event-name to an interrupt service routine has been deleted.(3) The capability of handling errors at run-time has been deleted.

BASIC is a well established programming system for numerical analysis and small data processing applications. Its attraction is the unification in a coherent language of all the system functions including editing, running, debugging, file management, and the application program itself, combined with a user interface that is easy to learn and to apply. There are two possible approaches to the introduction of CAMAC into BASIC: (1) To use the facilities provided in the language, such as subroutines and functions (2) To introduce new statements for input/ output, interrupt handling, and declarations This recommendation adopts the second approach, in which all the attributes specific to CAMAC are declared separately from the executable part of the program, which is therefore independent of the hardware system. Two criteria have been used in defining the extension.