Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cmcl2!yale!eagle!rsilverman
From: rsilverman@eagle.wesleyan.edu
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Re: Blue book #19 confustion
Message-ID: <3799@eagle.wesleyan.edu>
Date: 18 Nov 89 00:10:32 GMT
References: <932@mtk.UUCP>
Distribution: usa
Lines: 22

In article <932@mtk.UUCP>, marmar@mtk.UUCP (Mark Martino) writes:
> I was studying example #19 in the blue book today and I came across a
> line that I don't understand.  The program runs so it must make sense to
> the interpreter, but it doesn't make sense to me.
> 
> When creating a new font dictionary, this example uses this line:
> 
> { exch newfont 3 1 roll put }
> 
> "newfont" appears to be a new empty dictionary. I don't understand how
> newfont is being accessed and used here.  If one enters a string without
> the "/", the interpreter trys to find it in the dictionaries.  Shouldn't this
> return some kind of "can't find" error?  It seems to do this if you set
> this up and try to run it by itself.

If you look just four lines earlier in the code, you find

	/newfont numentries dict def

which creates a new dictionary via the "dict" operator and binds it to the name
"newfont".  Does this answer your question?
						Richard Silverman