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Groups > comp.lang.forth > #1431

Re: String Constants

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Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> writes:
>Anton Ertl <anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> wrote:
>> Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> writes:
>>>I wonder what would happen if someone not steeped in Forth tradition
>>>implemented the langauge from the standard; I wonder how many
>>>supposedly standard programs would cease to work.
>> 
>> It's not the programs that would not work, it's the system.
>
>I don't understand why you say that.  It doesn't seem to make any
>sense.  Could you explain a little more?

If a system does not follow common practice and breaks programs that
follow common practice, the system is broken, not the programs.

>> So you claim that the standard does not codify common practice in
>> this area.
>
>No, it doesn't, and deliberately so.  A major goal of ANS Forth, if
>not the most important goal, was to liberate the language from
>implementation-based specifications such as fig-FORTH.  This is a
>feature, not a bug.

In those cases where Forth-94 removed guarantees to programs, there
was typically a good reason and a benefit associated with it; e.g., it
removed the guarantee that the cell size is 16 bits in order to
include 32-bit (and later 64-bit systems) in the standard systems,
which in turn allows a wider set of programs.

For the change you suggest, there is no good reason and no benefit;
you had to contrive a hypothetical system (that no one has any reason
to implement) to have an example of a system that would break the
common-practice code.

If you want something cleanear than the somewhat
implementation-oriented approach I suggest in
<news:2011Apr22.194458@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at>, the way to go
would be to remove the restrictions to programs, i.e., something like:

|Standard programs can store to and fetch from UNUSED aus after HERE.

That would force changing many current systems (they would have to
move these buffers elsewhere), so it may be hard to convince system
implementors to agree with this extension.

<nit-pick>fig-Forth is an implementation, not a specification.</>

>> Then maybe you should make a proposeal that fixes this mistake
>> (if it is one), or at least makes things clearer.  But what you
>> suggested in <76-dnQbZoI8CPhDQnZ2dnUVZ_radnZ2d@supernews.com> is the
>> exact opposite of that (I'll comment on that posting separately).
>
>Is there any way to persuade you to provide URLs for messages you
>reference?

Sure, here it is:
<news:76-dnQbZoI8CPhDQnZ2dnUVZ_radnZ2d@supernews.com> 

(But it may be that your browser is no longer capable of dealing with
the "news:" scheme or that the message has expired on your news server
(or that the browser accesses the wrong news server), so you might
want to fall back to the Google Groups web-based Message-Id seearch.
Here's one way to access it:

http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/search.html

Use the second field.

- anton
-- 
M. Anton Ertl  http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html
comp.lang.forth FAQs: http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/faq/toc.html
     New standard: http://www.forth200x.org/forth200x.html
   EuroForth 2010: http://www.euroforth.org/ef10/

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Re: String Constants BruceMcF <agila61@netscape.net> - 2011-04-18 20:52 -0700
  Re: String Constants Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2011-04-19 03:44 -0500
    Re: String Constants BruceMcF <agila61@netscape.net> - 2011-04-21 21:34 -0700
      Re: String Constants Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2011-04-22 03:20 -0500
        Re: String Constants BruceMcF <agila61@netscape.net> - 2011-04-22 07:37 -0700
          Re: String Constants Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2011-04-22 11:12 -0500
            Re: String Constants anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2011-04-22 17:36 +0000
              Re: String Constants Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2011-04-22 13:05 -0500
                Re: String Constants anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2011-04-22 18:17 +0000
                Re: String Constants Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2011-04-23 03:22 -0500
                Re: String Constants anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2011-04-23 11:35 +0000
                Re: String Constants Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2011-04-23 11:37 -0500
                Re: String Constants anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2011-04-23 12:07 +0000
                Re: String Constants Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2011-04-23 11:40 -0500
                Re: String Constants BruceMcF <agila61@netscape.net> - 2011-04-22 12:22 -0700
            Re: String Constants BruceMcF <agila61@netscape.net> - 2011-04-22 12:13 -0700
              Re: String Constants Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2011-04-23 03:30 -0500
                Re: String Constants anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2011-04-23 11:44 +0000
                Re: String Constants Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2011-04-23 11:47 -0500
                Re: String Constants anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2011-04-26 09:23 +0000
                Re: String Constants Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2011-04-26 06:49 -0500
                Re: String Constants Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2011-04-25 00:50 -0700
                Re: String Constants anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2011-04-26 10:08 +0000
                Re: String Constants BruceMcF <agila61@netscape.net> - 2011-04-23 10:14 -0700
                Re: String Constants Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2011-04-24 03:15 -0500
                Re: String Constants BruceMcF <agila61@netscape.net> - 2011-04-24 13:26 -0700
                Re: String Constants Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2011-04-24 17:03 -0500
                Re: String Constants BruceMcF <agila61@netscape.net> - 2011-04-24 19:05 -0700
                Re: String Constants Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2011-04-25 03:08 -0500
                Re: String Constants kenney@cix.compulink.co.uk - 2011-04-25 07:07 -0500
                Re: String Constants BruceMcF <agila61@netscape.net> - 2011-04-25 08:00 -0700
                Re: String Constants Elizabeth D Rather <erather@forth.com> - 2011-04-25 08:56 -1000
                Re: String Constants BruceMcF <agila61@netscape.net> - 2011-04-25 07:45 -0700
                Re: String Constants Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2011-04-26 03:42 -0500
                Re: String Constants BruceMcF <agila61@netscape.net> - 2011-04-26 11:20 -0700
                Re: String Constants Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2011-04-26 11:02 -0700
                Re: String Constants Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2011-04-26 21:59 +0200
                Re: String Constants Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2011-04-27 03:26 -0500
                Re: String Constants Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2011-04-27 09:12 -0700
                Re: String Constants Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2011-04-27 11:28 -0500
                Re: String Constants Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2011-04-27 10:47 -0700
                Re: String Constants BruceMcF <agila61@netscape.net> - 2011-04-27 10:20 -0700
            Re: String Constants BruceMcF <agila61@netscape.net> - 2011-04-22 12:37 -0700

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