Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!SCFVM.BITNET!ZMLEB
From: ZMLEB@SCFVM.BITNET (Lee Brotzman)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: RE: Forth in an operating system
Message-ID: <8807012103.AA08574@jade.berkeley.edu>
Date: 1 Jul 88 20:31:06 GMT
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Organization: The Internet
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Date:     Thursday, 30 June 1988 0910-EST
From:     DAVID@PENNDRLS
Subject:  Re: FORTH in an operating system

Thanks for a wonderful article, Andre!  The ONERROR concept is a real
gem.  One of those things that once explained elicits the reaction
'Of course! That should have been obvious!'  But it wasn't.  I've been
banging my head against the problems ONERROR solves for some little
time, and am greatful to have a solution.  The aggregate stack is also
something I will probably adopt.

Is Comforth available in some fashion? If so, and if the price isn't too
high, I'd be interested in obtaining a copy.  It sounds like good
work.

Your points about FORTH being handicapped by the perception that it
is an operating system unto itself and therefore does not get
consistently integrated with the host operating system is very well
taken.  I would certainly like to see the standards committee define
a superset of the kernel that includes the syntax of words for
accessing operating system functions.  Even a small set like your
FILE set, and simple things like TIME and DATE would go a long
way toward making FORTH programs more transportable.  How about
standards for optional lexicons analogous to the standard sets of
library routines for C?

One minor operating-system-integration issue that I wonder if
the standards committees have ever addressed is that of host
character set.  Operating as I do primarily on IBM equipment, I
balked at having the word ASCII to generate the EBCDIC code for
a character.  I use CODEPOINT instead.  I also define words to
translate from both EBCDIC and ASCII into whatever the host
character set happens to be, and vice-versa.  On a given system,
a pair of these operations are non-operations, but it does provide
for character set independence.

-- R. David Murray    (DAVID@PENNDRLS.BITNET, DAVID@PENNDRLS.UPENN.EDU)