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From: ir230@sdcc6.ucsd.edu (john wavrik)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: 4 Lbs 12 oz
Keywords: Reply to Dan Sobral
Message-ID: <18609@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>
Date: 24 Apr 91 05:59:03 GMT
Organization: University of California, San Diego
Lines: 74


                          Comma

Daniel Sobral writes,

> This is a small reply to a long message from John J Wavrik. What I 
> think is that he's comparing ANS Forth with another Forth that we 
> currently use. I would like to know what Forth we currently use.

There is, of course, no way that I can tell this for any particular 
person. Until you posted your message I had no way of knowing which 
version of Forth you currently use. Now you have told me it is F-PC.
For other people it will be F83, MMS-Forth, etc. The "Forth that we 
currently use" depends on the person.

No matter which Forth you currently use, you will be faced with the 
problem I discussed in my last article (assuming you are interested 
in writing portable Forth): 

    (1)  You will have to determine what parts of current code
         need to be changed.
    (2)  You will have to know how to change them.

I can guarantee that almost any significant application you have 
written in F-PC will crash if you try to run it without change on an 
arbitrary system picked at random from existing versions of Forth.

I can also guarantee that almost any significant application you have 
now will crash on a future system written in compliance with the 
proposed ANSI standards.

                           ---------------- 

Within the past 6 years, Forth has changed itself. It was once a 
language that had a reputation for allowing amazing things to be done 
portably. Mitch Bradley has documented its decline to a state in which
outsiders say "If you want to do anything significant in Forth, you 
have to throw portability out the window".

It is very sad -- this decline in portability is a major factor 
preventing Forth from being marketable.

A restoration of portability is extremely important. A good Standard 
with clearly specified words is vital for the survival of Forth.

   IF MY POSTINGS HAVE EVER HAVE GIVEN ANYONE THE IMPRESSION THAT
   I AM AGAINST STANDARDS -- LET ME ASSURE THEM OTHERWISE.
   
A good Standard is vital for the survival of Forth -- a bad Standard
will be its downfall. A good Standard deserves the support of 
everyone concerned with the survival of Forth.

> I, 
> for example, use TCOM and F-PC 3.53, both from the same guy, and 
> distributed in a same package... and I can't use comma as John J 
> Wavrik has said we use in neither one. 

The uses I gave of comma are perfectly common and historically 
correct. You can find comma used in these ways in published code 
(Forth Dimensions, proceedings of Forth conferences, JFAR, etc.)  Most 
users do not have to go much further than the source code of their 
systems to find examples of all three. 

Of the three uses of comma, F-PC uses comma for one of them and X, for 
the other two ( X, is used for storing execution and branch 
addresses). You can find examples of each of these uses with the REF 
utility in your F-PC system. 



                                            John J Wavrik 
       jjwavrik@ucsd.edu                    Dept of Math  C-012 
                                            Univ of Calif - San Diego 
                                            La Jolla, CA  92093