Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!wuarchive!decwrl!ucbvax!MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM!wmb
From: wmb@MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: various BASIS10 remarks & suggestions
Message-ID: <9003250044.AA03837@jade.berkeley.edu>
Date: 24 Mar 90 03:13:47 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: wmb@MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 34

> Andrew Scott writes:
> I'm now of the opinion that COMPILE should have been defined similar to
> EXECUTE:
>
>  COMPILE  ( execution-token -- )
>
> COMPILE DUP would be replaced by ['] DUP COMPILE.
> ...
> The problem with COMPILE and [COMPILE] (and even BASIS's POSTPONE) is that
> they are all adding more prefix operators to the language.  It's much more
> useful for words to take their arguments from the stack instead of the
> input stream (like [COMPILE] and some versions of COMPILE).  The examples
> above show that ' and ['] (or just ' if you like state smart words) help
> factor things.


I have a proposal to this effect in front of the ANS Forth committee right
now.  The word is called COMPILE-TOKEN  (it can't be called just COMPILE ,
because that would break a lot of existing code), and it works just like
it says above.

It came up for discussion at the last meeting, and went the way that a lot
of my proposals seem to go:  A majority agrees, but the minority is large
enough that the proposal goes into limbo.

On this particular issue, after the discussion was over, I came up with
what I think are airtight answers to all of the objections raised during
the discussion, and published those answers in a technical comment.
Maybe next meeting things will start to look up.

All you folks could help by calling up ANSI Forth committee members and
voicing your support of COMPILE-TOKEN .

Mitch  (down with prefix operators in Forth!)  Bradley