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From: wmb@MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Interpreted strings
Message-ID: <9009071315.AA02300@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 7 Sep 90 01:43:10 GMT
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Reply-To: wmb%MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM@SCFVM.GSFC.NASA.GOV
Organization: The Internet
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> I implemented " to work interactively in a dedicated scratch buffer
> of 1024 bytes ...

I believe that LMI Forth does it this way too.  This is a good scheme.
The major opposition to this scheme, and indeed nearly all "transient"
interpreted string schemes, came from a committee member who is heavily
involved in multi-user databases.  I mean hundreds of users on a system,
not just a few.  The interpreted string buffers would have to be a per-user
resource, and that can add up to a lot of memory.  Obviously, we can think
of work arounds, but this person was extremely adamant and vocal, and his
points were quite sound if you accept his constraints.

I don't want to argue the point, as I personally like the many-string
buffer approach, and use it.  I just wanted to report on the opposing
point of view.

> >I proposed that the system guarantee that at least 2 string buffers
> >of at least 80 characters each.
>
> 	too restrictive!

I have found 2 strings to be adequate for 99+% of my applications, and
I didn't think that any larger requirement had a change of passing.  As
it turns out, the 2x80 minimum requirement didn't even pass!

Mitch Bradley, wmb@Eng.Sun.COM