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From: wmb@MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: DOER..MAKE
Message-ID: <9008101346.AA02615@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 9 Aug 90 18:30:55 GMT
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Reply-To: wmb%MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM@SCFVM.GSFC.NASA.GOV
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> On the other hand, I appreciate the value of a foundation that is
> simple, consistent, and regular, and I know how the traditional Forth
> model fills decompilers and metacompilers with ad hoc-isms that must be
> expanded with the addition of each new non-postfix-ism.
>
> I remain torn. Perhaps there's a cure waiting for me out there somewhere.
> Thanks for an excellent response.

I think it is possible to "have your cake and eat it too" in this case.
I have no problem with adding "syntactic sugar" *on top of* a regular
postfix foundation.  If the primitives are done correctly, then it is
often easy to define the "syntactic sugar" in terms of the primitives.
The converse is usually not true.

A number of Forth constructs are defined at too high a level.  FIND is
one example (there should be a primitive VFIND that searches just one
vocabulary).  FORGET is another (the operation of unlinking words from
a vocabulary should be separate from the operation of reclaiming the
dictionary space).  As previously stated, the operations of creating
the executable object and giving it a name should be separate in
defining words.

Cheers,
Mitch