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From: wmb@MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: Use explicit arguments
Message-ID: <9102131532.AA07035@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 12 Feb 91 22:00:22 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: wmb%MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM@SCFVM.GSFC.NASA.GOV
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 18

> Too bad that
> there isn't a category for <This feature is here because of our mandate for
> not breaking lots of code.  However, this feature is being replaced by X
> which is what should be used to write new code.>

Ah, but there is.  Look at CONVERT , >NUMBER and EXPECT , ACCEPT .

>NUMBER and ACCEPT essentially perform the same functions as CONVERT and
EXPECT, but they fix some problems.  CONVERT requires a non-numeric
character at the end of the string it's converting, which makes it a
real pain to use with arbitrary strings (it also essentially forces
the string returned by WORD to have an uncounted blank at the end).
EXPECT returns its value in the variable SPAN, whose contents can get
clobbered by the text interpreter.

The "magic word" describing the category is "obsolescent".

Mitch