lwt1@aplvax.UUCP (06/01/84)
<take this you nasty line eater>
A public-domain version of FORTH for the PDP-11 running under unix is
now available. Contact me to receive a copy of the system over the net-
work. The following files are included in the distribution:
README description of system and booting procedures in nroff format.
forth.1h manual page in nroff format.
format.c program to format and pretty print glossary.
glossary description of each word in FORTH system.
prim.as bootstrap FORTH source system written in unix assembler.
os.as
METAASM metaassembler.
META1 metacompiler.
META2
auto commands to control metacompilation.
SYS:ASM actual FORTH system source written in FORTH and FORTH assembler.
SYS:SRC
Total size of the distribution file is 126K.
This FORTH system was developed under Venix which is supposedly version 7
unix. Only plain vanilla system calls were used for the sake of portabil-
ity.
Unix-FORTH is a subset of FORTH-83. The only place that unix-FORTH
and FORTH-83 diverge is in the implementation of I/O. It seems natural
that a unix FORTH should take advantage of unix's elegant I/O structure
even at the cost of standardization. Therefore, unix-FORTH is a process
that reads commands from its standard input and sends results to its stan-
dard output. If the standard input is the user's terminal, an interactive
FORTH session results. Or a file of batch commands can be attached to the
standard input and executed non-interactively.
A programmer used to typical FORTH systems will immediately note the
absence of FORTH screens. FORTH screens are inadequate for managing any-
thing but the smallest programs and arbitrarily constrain software modules
to be sixteen lines long. Unix-FORTH uses the unix file system and pro-
grams are created with any text editor. Therefore, the entire unix toolbox
is available for operation on FORTH source files. Unix-FORTH provides a
set of I/O words that are very similar to their unix system-call counter-
parts. The user can have up to fifteen (system dependent) files open
simultaneously. This, along with unix-FORTH's I/O implementation, allow
the use of nested loads.
A number of other enhancements are available to the user of unix-
FORTH. Any program resident in the unix file system can be executed from
within FORTH. For example, to list the files in your current directory on
the line printer, you would type:
" ls | lpr" SYSTEM
A new subshell can be spawned without disturbing your current FORTH
environment by typing SHELL. Typing a ^C will cause FORTH to execute its
warm start code. This allows you to terminate a program run amok without
killing FORTH. ^D (EOF) will terminate the FORTH process.
A version of this system for the VAX is almost ready. Contact me if
there is any interest.
*UNIX is a trademark of Bell Labs.
*VENIX is a trademark of VentureCom.
-Lloyd Taylor (for John Hayes)
...seismo!umcp-cs!aplvax!lwt1
---I will have had been there before, soon.---