Introduction

Contents | Main Index

NQC stands for Not Quite C, and is a simple language for programming several LEGO MINDSTORMS products. Some of the NQC features depend on which MINDSTORMS product you are using. This product is referred to as the target for NQC. Presently, NQC supports four different targets: RCX, CyberMaster, Scout, and RCX2 (an RCX running 2.0 firmware). This document uses four colors to distinguish the targets where appropriate. A color-key is shown at the top of every page.

The preprocessor and control structures of NQC are very similar to C. NQC is not a general purpose language - there are many restrictions that stem from limitations of the targets.

Logically, NQC is defined as two separate pieces.

1. The NQC langauge describes the syntax to be used in writing programs.
2. The NQC API describes the system functions, constants, and macros that can be used by programs. This API is defined in a special file built in to the compiler. By default, this file is always processed before compiling a program.

This HTML document currently describes only the NQC API. Visit one of these links below for documentation about the language (and API) - I recommend the first link:

• NQC Programmer's Guide in Windows HTML Help format by Wade Peterson (use IE to download, not Netscape)
• Official NQC documentation page - contains a PDF and a Word version of the full documentation
• PDF version with bookmarks and hyperlinks
by Robert Doucette

Someday I may get around to translating the Language part into HTML also... If you would find this useful, send me email.

Since there are several different interfaces/IDEs for NQC, this document does not describe how to use any specific NQC implementation. Refer to the documentation provided with the NQC tool/IDE. (I use RcxCC v3.2, maintained by John Hansen.)

For up-to-date information and documentation for NQC, visit the NQC Web Site at http://www.enteract.com/~dbaum/nqc.

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