[comp.lang.forth] CELLs and BLOCKs in the ANSI standard

wmb@SUN.COM (08/08/89)

The current version of the ANSI standard "basis" document has:

   CELL   ( -- n )       Number of address units in a stack-width item
   CELLS  ( n1 -- n2 )  n2 is the number of address units in n1
                        stack-width items
   CELL+  ( addr1 -- addr2 )  Advance to the address of the next cell-sized
                        item.

It is likely that there are going to be similar words BYTE , BYTES , and BYTE+


Furthermore, the basis document has extension wordsets for both
BLOCKs and files.  The file access words behave similarly to the
Unix system calls "read, write, open, close, lseek".

I lobbied for something closer to C "standard I/O", but the opposing
viewpoint prevailed.

Mitch