wmb@MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM (07/04/90)
I'm concerned that some harsh evaluations may be based on misunderstandings: >The one that really galls me is NOT. For twenty years 'NOT' has been a >simple boolean 'NOT'. Forth-79 says: NOT ( flag -> ! flag ) Reverse truth value. Equivalent to 0=. Forth-83 says: NOT ( 16b1 -- 16b2 ) 16b2 is the one's complement of 16b1 Quoting from Kelly and Spies _FORTH: A Text and Reference_, p34: There is another word, NOT , whose use is inconsistent in different dialects of FORTH. In most dialects and in FORTH-79, NOT doesn't change bits; it does something quite different ... . In FORTH-83, however, NOT changes each bit to its opposite. ANS Forth didn't change or "kill" NOT . Forth-83 changed (and thus ultimately killed) NOT . ANS Forth simply noted that the damage has already been done, and is beyond repair, unless you are willing to break "most dialects" (as claimed in Kelly and Spies) of Forth. Mitch Bradley
dwp@willett.UUCP (Doug Philips) (07/04/90)
wmb@MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM, in <9007040412.AA28121@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>, writes: > ANS Forth didn't change or "kill" NOT . Forth-83 changed (and thus > ultimately killed) NOT . ANS Forth simply noted that the damage has > already been done, and is beyond repair, unless you are willing to > break "most dialects" (as claimed in Kelly and Spies) of Forth. At this point I'm inclinded to think it is Forth programmers that have killed Forth. I think Mitch's earlier point 'divided (no pun intended) we fall, united we stand' is important. I suspect that there are factions within the Forth community who would rather see it die that become "standardized" (or at least standardized to anything other than what they have). Perhaps die is to strong a word, but "languish" may not be. 1) Can Forth be standardized? (Moore says so [FD #1, Vol???]) 1a) Is Forth, by nature, something that will "die" if standardized? Does it represent a degree of freedom that is impossible to "standardize" without losing the essence? 1b) Is the lack of a de-facto Forth standard due to something about Forth itself (1a) or due to something about (policital nature?) Forth programmers? 2) Should Forth be standardized? Why did the people who got together to do Forth-79, Forth-83 and now ANSI Forth do what they did? Is Wavrik's (and others too) goal of a common base realistic? (as opposed to theoretically attainable) 3) Assuming that Forth can be standardized, is it realistic to expect that technical merits will be used to extract the best of the current existing practice? Is it reasonable to assume that if a consensus arises that anyone will be happy with it, as opposed to merely being too tired to keep on fighting? 3) Does it really matter if the current crop of Forth programmers will use the/a standard (Baden's question)? Is it important only for the next generation of Forth programmers (like me) who aren't yet tied into any of the existing systems? Will it only matter to those who want to write "really" portable Forth programs? 3a) Perhaps the importance of the standard won't be in how many implementations conform to it, or how may conforming programs are written in it, but in identifying what the late 1980s, early 1990s portability issues are for Forth programmers? -Doug --- Preferred: willett!dwp@hobbes.cert.sei.cmu.edu OR ...!sei!willett!dwp Daily: ...!{uunet,nfsun}!willett!dwp [in a pinch: dwp@vega.fac.cs.cmu.edu]