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From: howellg@idec.stc.co.uk (Gareth Howell)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: TIL design topics
Message-ID: <751@argon.idec.stc.co.uk>
Date: Tue, 18-Nov-86 09:35:37 EST
Article-I.D.: argon.751
Posted: Tue Nov 18 09:35:37 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 19-Nov-86 22:31:59 EST
References: <1001@usl.UUCP>
Reply-To: howellg@idec.stc.co.uk (Gareth Howell)
Organization: STC Network Systems, Stevenage, UK
Lines: 24
Keywords: Roll Your Own Language

In article <1001@usl.UUCP> elg@usl.UUCP (Eric Lee Green) writes:
>Velcome, forthfans.
>
>I am currently designing a small threaded language in which to program
>my fairly new Commodore 128. I don't particularly like FORTH, it is
>excruciatingly slow on a 6502, and the command names are just aweful
> ....
>
>Reversing the links: In most FORTH systems, the "cgmpiler" or
>"interpreter" (threader?) starts searching for words starting at the
>last word defines, and runs down the link till reaching the bottom or
>finding the word. The most-used words, like "@" and "!", though, are
>defined close to the bottom of the text stack.  So why not start at
>the bottom, and go upwards? In Superforth-64, it sometimes takes 10
>seconds to compile a block after reading it in from disk (which is
>tediously slow in itself, with the notorious 1541 drive). Probably due
>to the fact that it has some 250-300 words in its vocabulary.
>
>But, what side effects will that have? Surely, there is SOME reason
>that FORTH systems usually have the links going the wrong way!
>
The major drawback that I can see is that the re-definition of a word
will not cause that new definition to be used in future invocations;
the old one will always be used.