wmb@pi.Eng.Sun.COM (Mitch Bradley) (06/02/90)
The ANS Forth division compromise does NOT make it impossible to write
portable code. It just means that the vendor-supplied "/" operator is
not the operator you use to write it.
There are 3 completely-portable, precisely-defined division operators
"UM/MOD", "FM/MOD", and "SM/MOD" which you can use to get exactly the
behavior that you need. If you insist on using the word "/" to mean
a particular kind of division, then your application can redefine "/"
in terms of one of the precise operators. Example - if you want "/"
to be floored, then add this line to the start of your application:
: / S>D FM/MOD NIP ;
So far, I know of NO decision that the committee has made that makes
it impossible to portable code. Quite the contrary. In cases where
the meaning of a particular (controversial) word has been declared to
be implementation-defined, new words with "neutral" names have been
provided to do the precise things.
A similar example is "NOT" . It was impossible to get people to agree on
whether it means bitwise logical inversion or negation of a flag.
So, "NOT" is no longer a standard word (and in actual fact, "NOT" has not
been portable since 1983). Instead, the word "INVERT" means bitwise logical
inversion, no questions asked, and the word "0=" means flag negation.
Again, those people who insist on using "NOT" in their application are
free to define it at the start of their application, to mean whatever
they insist that it should mean.
Mitch Bradley