Learn to Program with Small Basic

Igpay Atinlay
Let’s teach the computer a language game called pig latin. The rules for
creating pig latin words are simple. To convert a word into pig latin, move
the first letter to the end and add the letters ay after it. So, the word talk
becomes alktay, fun becomes unfay, and so on. Can you decipher the original
title of this section?
Figure 18-5 shows the strategy you’ll use to convert a word into pig
latin, using the word basic.
Input
b
Output
a s i c
a s i c b a y
Extract substring (from letter 2
to the end) and assign it to the
output string.
Append the first letter to the
output string.
Append ay to the output
string.
Figure 18-5: Translating an English word into pig latin
You first extract the substring from the second character to the end and
assign it to the output string. You then add the first letter in the input string
to the output, followed by ay. Enter the code in Listing 18-7 to implement
these steps.
1 ' PigLatin.sb
2 TextWindow.Title = "Pig Latin"
3
4 While ("True")
5 TextWindow.Write("Enter a word: ")
6 word = TextWindow.Read()
7
8 pigLatin = Text.GetSubTextToEnd(word, 2) ' Gets characters 2 to end
9 pigLatin = pigLatin + Text.GetSubText(word, 1, 1) ' Appends first character
10 pigLatin = pigLatin + "ay" ' Appends "ay"
11 TextWindow.WriteLine(pigLatin) ' Displays the output
12 TextWindow.WriteLine("")
13 EndWhile
Listing 18-7: Converting a word entered by the user into pig latin
The program runs an infinite loop to allow the user to try different
words (line 4). After reading the input word from the user (line 6), we
extract the substring that starts at position 2 (that is, from the second
character to the end of the input word) and assign it to pigLatin. Then we
extract the first letter from word and append it to pigLatin (line 9), followed
by ay (line 10). We display the pig latin word (line 11), followed by an empty
line (line 12) and go for another round. Ongratulationscay! Ouyay inishedfay
ouryay rogrampay!
276 Chapter 18