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From: ForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: ANS TC Magnet for Interpreter
Message-ID: <2407.UUL1.3#5129@willett.pgh.pa.us>
Date: 21 Feb 91 23:30:56 GMT
Organization: (n.) to be organized.  But that's not important right now.
Lines: 54


 Date: 02-21-91 (05:11)              Number: 1273 of 1274
   To: GARY SMITH                    Refer#: 1230
 From: CHRIS WATERS                    Read: NO
 Subj: Ans Tc Magnet For Interpr     Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE
 Conf: FORTH (58)                 Read Type: GENERAL (+)

 Reply To: wmb@MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM
  Subject: Conditional compilation

 > The trouble with query paren is that it doesn't nest, and it's a
 >royal  pain to use if the stuff you are enclosing contains embedded
 >right parens.

 This is true, though the same argument could be leveled against using
 paren as a comment character!!  Personally, I don't relish the idea of
 using BEGINCOMMENT ... ENDCOMMENT.  And I don't relish IFTRUE either.
 If a clumsy mechanism of this type must be used (and, sigh, I suppose it
 must) at least let there be a contest or something for BETTER NAMES!

 To kick off the contest, I will propose [IF] [ELSE] [THEN]. <grin>

 Some may argue that this goes against hysterical (er, historical) usage.
 To this I reply, I can show you at least one commercial Forth (albeit a
 discontinued one) that uses IFTRUE as an alias for IF (to correspond to
 the IFFALSE, which compiled a -?BRANCH).  And the Forth may be
 discontinued, but I believe there is still one company (Rolodex, no
 less) that still uses it as the basis for a couple of their products.

 Also, I think the names [IF] [ELSE] [THEN] are more consistent with
 standard Forth usage, and easier to understand.

 Comments anyone?

 >Interestingly, within hours of announcing their existence, I
 >received  an enthusiastic personal email reply from a person who
 >was very glad  to have them.

 Certainly, having conditional compilation (conditional interpretation?)
 is better than not having it.  Did you offer this person a choice
 between IFTRUE and query-paren?  ;)
 ---
 Tag1.2 * And just why _do_ we need more lerts, anyway?
 ---
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