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From: john@aplcomm.jhuapl.edu (John Hayes)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: BASIS Feedback
Message-ID: <1990Dec14.140925.1595@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu>
Date: 14 Dec 90 14:09:25 GMT
References: <2114.UUL1.3#5129@willett.pgh.pa.us>
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Reply-To: john@aplcomm.jhuapl.edu (John Hayes)
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>>I assert that POSTPONE is the fundamental operator. POSTPONE is used
>>for more often than COMPILE, (compile-comma) and [COMPILE]

>Huh?  More fundamental?  Used far more often?  How come I've never
>seen or heard of it in 12 years of Forth experience?  Moreover, from
>your description, it sounds as if it searches the dictionary at
>run-time.  While this could be a useful function under certain
>circumstances, it is entirely different from the functions of COMPILE
>and [COMPILE], which must, by definition, search the dictionary at
>compile-time.

Allow me to rephrase.  At the application program level, postponing
the compile time behavior of a word (whether you call this POSTPONE,
COMPILE, or something else) is done far more frequently than
appending the execution behavior embodied in an execution token
to a new definition (whether you call this COMPILE, (compile-comma),
COMPILE-TOKEN, or , (comma)).

John R. Hayes			john@aplcomm.jhuapl.edu
Applied Physics Laboratory
Johns Hopkins University