Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!princeton!caip!topaz!uwvax!astroatc!philm
From: philm@astroatc.UUCP (Phil Mason)
Newsgroups: net.lang,net.lang.forth
Subject: Re: RRe: What's so good about FORTH?
Message-ID: <461@astroatc.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 26-Jun-86 12:28:55 EDT
Article-I.D.: astroatc.461
Posted: Thu Jun 26 12:28:55 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 29-Jun-86 05:15:12 EDT
References: <201@pyuxv.UUCP> <3700003@uiucdcsp> <132@vaxb.calgary.UUCP>
Reply-To: philm@astroatc.UUCP (Phil Mason)
Organization: Astronautics ATC, Madison, WI
Lines: 33
Keywords: FORTH, threaded-code
Xref: watmath net.lang:2516 net.lang.forth:453

In article <255@myrias.UUCP> mj@myrias.UUCP (Michal Jaegermann) writes:
>>Maybe I'm not seeing the point about "threaded" languages -- you don't see
>>C programmers claiming that the major advantage of C is that you can use
>
>A fact that Forth is "threaded" is not a part of a language definition
>but side-effect of the most popular implementation method.  It gives
>very compact and flexible code with an ease of extensions.  The method
>is far from beeing unique to Forth and there are some Forth
>implementations which are not exatly "threaded".  At least not in the
>sense described earlier in some response.  An extreme case is to have
>the whole Forth as a huge 'case' statement in C.  (Yes, I have seen
>something like that :-) ).
>

A neat concept is that Forth is a psuedo-code based system. The
inner interpreter of Forth actually handles the threaded object code. 
The raw code that makes up the outer Forth interpreter is just an application 
run on the Forth pseudo-machine (the inner interpreter). You can really
think of the innermost guts of Forth as kind of a machine language for the
portable threaded code stack machine and not be incorrect. That's one reason
why the inner interpreter can be written in any language as long as it can 
interpret the threaded code with which the outer interpreter is written.



-- 
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Kirk  : Bones ?                |  Phil Mason, Astronautics Technical Center
Bones : He's dead Jim.         |  Madison, Wisconsin - "Eat Cheese or Die!"
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -|  
...seismo-uwvax-astroatc!philm |  I would really like to believe that my
...ihnp4-nicmad/               |  employer shares all my opinions, but . . . 
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=