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From: ForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Input/Output
Message-ID: <2921.UUL1.3#5129@willett.pgh.pa.us>
Date: 25 Jun 91 02:31:09 GMT
Organization: (n.) to be organized.  But that's not important right now.
Lines: 34

Category 10,  Topic 23
Message 9         Mon Jun 24, 1991
D.RUFFER [Dennis]            at 00:22 EDT
 
Re: B.RODRIGUEZ2 [Brad]

 > Obviously BCD is not allowed

Why not?  Do not two BCD digits "fit" into a byte and doesn't that combination
become a number that's less than 255?  I don't understand how you conclude
that BCD is "not allowed".

 > My understanding was that the ISO character set (ASCII with some
 > international tweaks) was mandated by the BASIS.  Is this
 > incorrect?

BASIS uses the ... (can't remember the name right now) character set, but I do
not think it precludes a standard system from using some other character set.

 > Those of us who (by choice or necessity) are stingy with our
 > memory often store boolean flags in byte variables.  Is this
 > practice disallowed by ANS Forth?

This has never been portable or "allowed" by any standard. The BASIS does not
make it any more acceptable than it ever was.  However, since there is not
typing in Forth, there is nothing to stop you from doing it.  Since a true
flag is non-zero and a false flag is zero, it will probably even work.

   {B-{)>   DaR
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