Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!ut-emx!juniper!olorin
From: olorin@juniper.uucp (David Weinstein)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: Infix operators
Summary: Who needs infix and other tales of the dark beyond
Keywords: Parallel, controllers
Message-ID: <4057@juniper.uucp>
Date: 27 Aug 88 14:45:19 GMT
References: <8808121826.AA23206@jade.berkeley.edu> <1575@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <6882@well.UUCP> <1581@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk>
Reply-To: olorin@juniper.UUCP (David Weinstein)
Organization: Austin UNIX Users' Group, Austin, TX
Lines: 42

In article <1581@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> orr@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Fraser Orr) writes:
[...]
>never done such programming in forth. What I am absolutely certain of
>though, is that  if you used a preprocessor that allowed infix, procedures
>with parameter lists, type checking, and all the other things that the
>rest of the Comp Sco world has agreed to be benificial, then the job would
>be much easier.

NO, it would not. It is possible to write awful code for any language (ever
*looked* at the Unix source?). But even the best written C still looks,
well, sloppy. Forth lets you (but does not force you to) write very high level
code, which will converge to RPN english (noun verb format). Writing in this
style takes a bit more effort, but with proper factoring, and keeping most of
the Forth "noise" words down at a lower level, the resulting code is quite
readable, and does not suffer (at least at the top level), from "flip flop
swap drop" fever (although these "noise words are used at lower levels). 
It is impossible to work to that high a level in languages like C, because the
language format is inflexible, and you cannot abstract out the ()s or other
pieces of syntactical noise from your code.


As to the great infix/postfix/prefix/fix-the-fight controversy:

RPN is not hard to learn, and quickly becomes intuitive. As to the assertion
that programmers don't learn it, how many are using HP Calculators? How many
non-programmers use adding-machines?


And thanks Fraser....
  ....comp.lang.forth has been saved from an ignominious decline into an
  infrequent stream of requests for Forth for new computers...


:-)



-- 
Dave Weinstein
Internet: olorin@walt.cc.utexas.edu
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