Wordlists



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The unification of Forth vocabulary mechanisms was as badly needed as unifying Forth File I/O. The ANS solution here was to provide a set of words that are at a much more fundamental or primitive level. These words can either be used directly, or to implement a more traditional appearing vocabulary scheme. Unfortunately, it appears that the practical result of this is that the user must learn yet another vocubulary management scheme, in spite of the technical merits of the wordlist mechanism.

Can you really use it?

Yes ! There are flaws in the standard, but the first time around that is bound to happen. It is certainly better than the first Ada standard ! ANS Forth is a practical usable language.

By using ANS Forth you gain,

  • portability between compilers on a given platform
  • portability (to a degree) between platforms and operating systems
  • a practical language which can be used to write general purpose libraries.

Skip Carter
Mon Feb 26 08:26:58 PST 1996