Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!SUN.COM!wmb From: wmb@SUN.COM Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth Subject: (none) Message-ID: <9001191216.AA22464@jade.berkeley.edu> Date: 18 Jan 90 20:53:04 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: Forth Interest Group International List Organization: The Internet Lines: 14 > to worry about word size only when necessary. Force the stack > to be the largest integer supported by the machine. More precisely, the minimum stack width should be determined by the machine's address arithmetic. The stack should be at least as wide as the widest address upon which normal arithmetic operators work. For the 8086, that would be 16 bits. For the 68000, that would be 32 bits. The reason for this is that an address must fit in a stack cell (for the purposes of e.g. '@' ), and '+' must be useable for calculating addresses. Mitch