Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!rutgers!apple!bionet!ames!hc!lanl!cmcl2!acf3!sabbagh
From: sabbagh@acf3.NYU.EDU (sabbagh)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: forth standard
Keywords: gripes, observations
Message-ID: <1077@acf3.NYU.EDU>
Date: 24 Jul 89 14:18:04 GMT
References: <7224@medusa.cs.purdue.edu>
Reply-To: sabbagh@acf3.UUCP ()
Organization: New York University
Lines: 29

In article <7224@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> bouma@cs.purdue.EDU (William J. Bouma) writes:
>
>    People want a language that is flexible and self documenting. For
>    the most part, forth is that way. But there are stupid and needless
>    exceptions. For example, DO seems quite inflexible in requiring you
>    to use I and J as the loop variables. And if you want to nest 3 deep
>    you have to define a new word which indexes directly into a system
>    stack. Why not just say DO I ... where I could be any variable name?

Actually, I agree that, in many ways, FORTH standards fail to address
high level issues (32+ bit implementations, OS co-existence), but I
have to argue about the inflexibility of DO.  Many of the newer
ALGOL-based languages, most notably Ada, have struggled with the issue
of loop indexing.  In general, it is considered very bad to have an
index that can be read outside the loop.  In languages like C, the
programmer usually declares a local variable named i,j, etc., used
only for loop indexing.  I like the fact that FORTH has basically
eliminated this trouble spot.

Snap! (The sound of the last button on my asbestos suit...)

Hadil G. Sabbagh
E-mail:		sabbagh@csd27.nyu.edu
Voice:		(212) 998-3285
Snail:		Courant Institute of Math. Sci.
		251 Mercer St.
		New York,NY 10012

186,282 miles per second -- it's not just a good idea, it's the law!