Path: utzoo!yunexus!ists!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!ficc!peter From: peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth Subject: Re: ANS FORTH/PICK and ROLL Message-ID: <7037@ficc.uu.net> Date: 17 Nov 89 18:01:28 GMT Article-I.D.: ficc.7037 References: <8911170645.AA20490@jade.berkeley.edu> Reply-To: peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) Organization: Xenix Support, FICC Lines: 29 > > There is *no* technical reason to require this "TO" abomination. > Actually, that turns out not to be the case. If you use @ and !, > the data must be stored in addressable memory. With TO, the local > variables can be stored in registers or on a special hardware stack > or in a different segment. OK. It's still incredibly ugly. And the number of implementations that could usefully take advantage of registers in this context is not likely to be large. Certainly not in the embedded controller feild. Hardware stacks are even scarcer. > A lot of people I have talked to really like "TO" variables > (or QUANs or VALUEs or whatever you want to call them). I called them EQUs, back when I thought they were a neat idea. They really don't add much to the language, though, and much of what they add is confusion. > ANSI standard group, where even the seemingly most trivial point can > trigger bloody arguments, there seemed to be no opposition to the "TO" > semantics. Sigh. -- `-_-' Peter da Silva . 'U` -------------- +1 713 274 5180. "vi is bad because it didn't work after I put jelly in my keyboard." -- Jeffrey W Percival (jwp@larry.sal.wisc.edu)