Mitch.Bradley@ENG.SUN.COM (05/28/91)
> To me, a hyphen tends to imply that a word is doing two things. Your example > of READ-FILE is doing exactly that. It is selecting the FILE device and > doing a READ on it. READ-LINE is doing the same thing from the LINE device > (:whatever that is:). Given that overloaded operators are anathema to Forth philosophy, the names have to indicate the data type of the operands. We have "+" and "D+" and "F+". We don't have enough spare letters to uniquely assign a single letter as the "data type identifier" for every useful data object, nor would that be wise from an ease-of-learning standpoint. Thus we are driven to "spell out" the names of data types (e.g. FILE , LINE). The remaining question is whether or not to use a hyphen (READFILE vs. READ-FILE). The "run-on words" approach can result in "wierd" words where it is difficult to decide where to split them, plus English usage says that individual words are spliced with a hyphen. Mitch.Bradley@Eng.Sun.COM