Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!willett!GEnie
From: GEnie@willett.UUCP (ForthNet articles from GEnie)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Category 10,  Topic 35
Message-ID: <74.UUL1.3#5129@willett.UUCP>
Date: 22 Dec 89 03:30:21 GMT
Organization: Latest Link in ForthNet Chain
Lines: 45

Message 73        Thu Dec 21, 1989
R.BERKEY [Robert]            at 01:08 PST
 
  To: Zafar Essak

 ZE>  ...feel strongly that if ( " ) returned the address of the
 ZE> count it would be more useful.

Yes, but address and length operands decouple the data structure from words
that manage it, and allow one common, portable, general-purpose string
descriptor.  SKIP and SCAN for example, must have address and length.  My
preference is to have one common string descriptor in the standard, and
another name for the single operand " .  Just last week I EDITALLed through a
megabyte of application code and renamed each of the " to $" in preparation
for adding the address and length " .



 ZE> ... I got...rationalizations how (block 0) provided a great
 ZE> place for comments.

 The only Forth I've known that had blocks starting with 1 was my mistaken
first attempt at a fig-FORTH.  The problem only appears with operating system
Forth's, as boot or object code gets put in block 0 on the standalone systems.
At Dysan, we kludged around the problem by storing -1 in BLK when block 0 was
being interpreted.  Pygmy's approach in mapping file blocks onto one master
set of block numbers has a certain elegance.



 ZE>    But I am still not clear from BASIS 10 if BLOCKS will be
 ZE> numbered from 0 up or from 1.

Good point.  X3.J14 has deleted the Forth-83 specifications that there are
known block numbers 0-31, with other available block numbers documented.  I'm
hesitant to guess why.



Robert Berkey

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