Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM!wmb
From: wmb@MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: Forth Implementation
Message-ID: <9003122241.AA20265@jade.berkeley.edu>
Date: 12 Mar 90 17:59:40 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: wmb@MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 26

> I am about to go thru
> and look for places to use COUNT to  walk forward thru a sequence of byte
> values (instead of DUP 1+ SWAP  C@), a practice recently decried by Mitch
> Bradley (I think it was).

I don't object to having a word to perform this function, but
it should be named something else other than COUNT .  How about
C@+ , or NEXTCHAR , or something like that.  It could still be
implemented as  : C@+ COUNT ; , or if you are worried about
speed, either implement it directly in code, duplicating the
the implementation of COUNT , or use something like Yngve's SYNONYM
facility to create "smart" aliases that either compile or execute
their referent as is appropriate.

COUNT has a specific purpose - converting a packed string to an
"addr len" string.  Using it to step through an array just makes
Forth harder to read, because the reader looks at it and thinks
there must a packed string somewhere.  Indeed, the name "count"
has negative mnemonic value in this case.

"Cleverness" (aha! this just happens to work so I'll use it)
at the expense of clarity is one of the things that gives Forth
a bad name in the computer community at large.

Cheers,
Mitch