Forth for PDP-11

From: Dwight K. Elvey <dwightk.elvey_at_amd.com>
Date: Thu Jun 27 11:30:34 2002

>From: "Hans B Pufal" <hansp_at_aconit.org>
>
>Zane H. Healy wrote:
>>>2 3 + .
>>>
>>>That's a total of 8 keys to press --
>>><two><space><three><space><plus><space><period><return>
>>>
>>>You should get
>>>5 OK
>>>on the terminal (or something like that, with a 5 in it).
>>
>>
>> Unfortunatly it results in:
>>
>> 2 3 + . .?
>
>The comment on the SOL page says it is a "non-standard" FORTH so perhaps
>reading the docs might be advisable.
>
> -- hbp
>
>

Hi
 It sounds like they replaced all of the '.' words. When
people start out in Forth, they find it hard to get used
to all of the shorthand words. Things like . _at_ ! , don't
have any meaning until one uses them for a while. Since
defining them is so easy, I've always thought the one could
just alias them. Once one got used to the other quirks
of the language, one could take advantage of the shorthand
words.
 I still use Forth for most any of the quick stuff I want
to do at home. It is probably the fast way to go from idea
to working program that I've encountered. I've written
assemblers, disassemblers, special editors, special file
transfer and any mumber of utilies with it. It isn't as
strong as perl for string handling but if you know what
you want to do, the language itself doesn't get in the
way. It is said that in Forth, "You don't write a program
for your application in Forth, you modify Forth to be
your application".
Dwight
Received on Thu Jun 27 2002 - 11:30:34 BST