lbrown@BRL.ARPA ("Leslie C. Brown", USATHAMA|SYS|Chris) (06/18/88)
I have uploaded a set of six files to SIMTEL20, comprising the 1988 release of the F83 FORTH compiler. It is a beta release of a public domain FORTH compiler. Filename Type Bytes CRC Directory PD1:<MSDOS.FORTH> F8388.ARC.1 BINARY 274920 77EAH F8388DC.ARC.1 BINARY 54424 3E88H F8388HP.ARC.1 BINARY 122063 2246H F8388RME.ARC.1 BINARY 6580 442DH F8388XTR.ARC.1 BINARY 111035 D3B3H F88COLOR.ARC.1 BINARY 22831 A9EBH This BETA release includes F88 a Forth that uses three main segments for Forth itself, and additional segments for other purposes, like the editor, screen saving ect. The three main segments F88 uses, are #1 a 64k segment for Code, variables, strings, and any user arrays that are not specifically placed in an external segment. This segment also places the CODE FIELD of all COLON definitions in the Code segment. CODE FIELDS in F88 are three (3) bytes in length. The second segment of 64k contains the BODYs of COLON definitions. The third segment of 64k contains the HEADS, or symbols for F88. Since a typical program is about half Program and half data, the seperation of code and colon space results in an easy doubling or more of effective program space. A small loss in performance resulted from this seperation, but the author views the benefits to greatly exceed the disadvantages. Fairly large programs can now be coded in F88, although there are still some obvious limits. For more details, see F8388RME.ARC.