Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!usc!ucsd!ucbvax!MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM!wmb
From: wmb@MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: Conventions and "tricks" used in Forth
Message-ID: <9010261354.AA01446@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 25 Oct 90 21:14:13 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: wmb%MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM@SCFVM.GSFC.NASA.GOV
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 16

> I have wondered for a long time why one doesn't hear of checking for
> numbers before words.

bad feed , dead beef

bed babe ?

dad faced a deaf cafe

The point is that there is no syntactic way in Forth to distinguish a number
from a word, given that the number input base can be hex.  Checking for
numbers first would remove some plausible words from the name space.  In
fact, the common word CFA , found in many pre-Forth-83 systems, parses as
a valid hex number.

Mitch Bradley, wmb@Eng.Sun.COM