5 - Forth Interest Group

I News from the Forth RoundTable
1 What is this language, Forth?
Gary Smith
Little Rock, Arkansas
Yes, there is an ANS Forth
in the process of being
drafted. Yes, the Technical
Committee has labored long
and hard in its collective at-
tempt to meet the conflicting
demands of minimalist ver-
sus maximalist, desktop user
versusembedded-system
implementor. Yes, many
compromises have been ar-
rived at and many arnbigu-
ities removed from the BA-
SIS as it winds ever closer to
only X3J14
but the
proposal manifest we all look
fonvard to. ISee@ANSFo?th
anMummt page 4J
As was pointed out in my
last columrtviaex*anges
'leaned from GEnie Forth
RoundTable lo#
Topic 25-several questions
are being debated In
this issue, we examine dis-
cussions in Category 10,
Topic 12, WJ14 Holding
Pattern," to discover that even
the question, "What
is this language, Forth?" is
subject to heated discussion
Maybe* when the dust has
settled, we will ciiscover the
ultimate truth that Forth is an
attitude and has nothing to
do with standardization.
Read on.. .
Caresor' lo: 'o*
Standards
From: Doug Philips
Re: Architecture and Implementation
John Wavrik writes:
"The ANSI team has a p
parently not only invented
a new language, but also
a new concept in com-
puter science: a language
that manipulates data
structures in a functional
way but does not allow
us to know what the data
structures are. Sure
doesn't soundlike a good
idea, does it? Certainly
isn't a tested idea, is it?'
Oh, come on now, X3J14
didn't do this fust, X3J11 did
it, and they probably weren't
even the first! HOW big is an
integer (cell)? Implements-
tion defmed, mranteed to
be at least n bits. How big is
a long (2cell)? Implementa-
tion defmed, guaranteed to
be at least m bits and m 2 n
1 will that one nee& to
know something about the
six ofthings (not
sothat,say, ' f oobar ! will
work (or not). Do I need to
know anything about what a
' execution-token really is?
No. 1 need to know is the
set of operators that take one
(or more) as arguments and
the set that can produce them.
I believe the term is
"ahtract data type." Can you
do arithmetic on a
tion-token? Yes, but it will
not be portable. As the standard
is concerned with portability,
it will not allow such
action in a conforming program.
"If one is to limit the ex-.,
tensibilityofForthand
rely upon vendor-sup-
plied standard operators,
then a great number of
them must besuppliedin
the hopes of meeting as
many needs as possible.
words like COW ILE, and
START : become ex-
tremely important as an
attempttorescuesomeof
the functionality of classi-
cal Forth. Even then, one
typically that the
do not
do exady what
Sounds exactly like the
mp that most conven-
tional languages have
falleninto, doesn'tit?And
Forth did have a
solution, didn't it? And
the is propos-
ing a language that ig-
This is very important, I
will agree.
"I mention this word because
it is one in which
deviant implementations
have already appeared.
There have been a host of
messages in this
newsgroup pointing out
that some of my examples
using START : do not
work on other trial irnplementations.
~ 11 I can say
is that I consulted the
author before implementing
mine. Incidentally,
I don't think this will
be unusual-1 think that
as moreimplementations
of the proposed ANSI
Forth appear, more deviations
will appear. It is
almost an inevitable consequence
of to
specify operaton while
beingfUzz~aboutwhat
they operate on-"
Funny, I thought that was
just the natural result of us-
ing English. And of the fact
that any group, having con-
centrated on something for
as long as any of the ANSI
Technical Committees [TCs]
do, will come to an under-
standing that is not always
vans*d in the first pass
or two. In fact, ANSI takes
Useful things that can't be
done demonstrate weakness
in the standard...
nores this solution, isn't it?"
Straw argument If
had had *bk and
~t that point, an oficial #re-
wsolutiO*~hered
be no "hard workn to doing
standard' perhaps,
a need to do one at all.)
"Not only is it not easy to
tell, without extensive
testing, whether sufficiently
many operators
have been added--but
there is the very real
problem of making sure
that they have been
'pecified
into account that it may not
get completely clarified until
after the standard is adopted
quest for interpretation" can
be submitted. I'm not totally
up on my procedure here,
but the answer is probably
binding on the standard
(couldsomeone from the TC
spell this out in painstaking
detail for me, please?). Yes, it
would be better if that never
had to be done. Better still is
a plan to handle corrections.
"It's a bit like a car trip: if
a wrong turn was taken
Forth Dimensions 19 January 1992 February