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From: jmunkki@hila.hut.fi (Juri Munkki)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.games
Subject: Re: Robot games...
Message-ID: <1991Apr12.190905.6835@santra.uucp>
Date: 12 Apr 91 19:09:05 GMT
References: <1991Apr7.212327.6218@en.ecn.purdue.edu> <112421@unix.cis.pitt.edu> <1991Apr8.154729.24914@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu> <112698@unix.cis.pitt.edu> <1991Apr9.174522.10940@santra.uucp> <1991Apr10.231829.9924@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au> <13962@adobe.UUCP>
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Reply-To: jmunkki@hila.hut.fi (Juri Munkki)
Followup-To: comp.lang.forth.mac
Organization: Helsinki University of Technology, FINLAND
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In article <13962@adobe.UUCP> hawley@adobe.UUCP (Steve Hawley) writes:
>FORTH is probably a little hardcore for most people, mostly because of the
>bizarre syntactic oddities (please don't start any threads about whether or
>not FORTH has syntax) like if-then-else contructs:
>
> <bool> IF <if-clause> ELSE <else-clause> THEN
>
>The language should be small, quick to interpret and easy to read/write.
...
>While I think FORTH is out of the question here since it loses on the
>read/write stuff (please, no flames -- I've written a FORTH compiler, I
>*know* the details of the language, and this is no place for "FORTH is
>easy/hard to write/read" arguments), I think that a better approach
>would be a more procedurally-based language than FORTH.
...
>For example, use a procedural RPN language with a stricter syntax than
>FORTH (say, something like PostScript), with tagged objects on the
>stack, giving you integers, floating point numbers, strings, arrays,
>name-objects, and procedures.

When I talk about Forth, I'm not usually talking about the current
Forth standards, but something that applies better to the task at
hand. 

In this case the implementation will have at least lists, strings,
numbers and pointer types. Procedures are not stored the way PostScript
uses them, but you can have procedure pointers, so the only thing that
is missing is that you can't manipulate procedures as lists.

As far as syntax, I've always felt that the PostScript style ifelse-
structure is harder to read than the equivalent Forth structure. This
may be just because I'm more used to Forth and you have more PostScript
experience. (I have used PostScript, but not recently.)

I'm going to write the Forth interpreter anyway, so if I feel like it,
I'll write a short prototype robot war program and let people decide
what they like.

Note that followups go to comp.lang.forth.mac.

   ____________________________________________________________________________
  / Juri Munkki	    /  Helsinki University of Technology   /  Wind  / Project /
 / jmunkki@hut.fi  /  Computing Center Macintosh Support  /  Surf  /  STORM  /
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