Re: Question on CHAR and [CHAR]

From	Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid>
Subject	Re: Question on CHAR and [CHAR]
Newsgroups	comp.lang.forth
References	(3 earlier) <jjrggf$jp7$2@news-01.bur.connect.com.au> <jjs87p$pf4$1@speranza.aioe.org> <op.wa7i6kjasu5d0p@david> <c5mdnUzSibGhTPzSnZ2dnUVZ_q6dnZ2d@supernews.com> <2012Mar15.130556@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at>
Message-ID	<DomdnQGI5Mn4cfzSnZ2dnUVZ_sSdnZ2d@supernews.com> (permalink)
Date	2012-03-15 08:19 -0500

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Anton Ertl <anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> wrote:
> Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> writes:
>>Well, they are redundant language feaures: you might as well say that
>>given [char], the characher literal is not required.  Why should
>>anyone prefer the "new" syntax?  AFAICS its only advantage is that
>>it's more familiar to C programmers.  Which is perhaps the point?
> 
> A few advantages that you failed to see:
> 
> + Code containing literals works the same inside and outside of colon
> definitions, in contrast to code containing [CHAR] or CHAR.
> 
> + Character literals are shorter.

I didn't fail to see them: they don't strike me as particularly
advantageous, although the first one is perhaps a nice feature.  Is it
worth the redundancy, though?  I imagine there are as many opinions
about that as there are Forth programmers.

> The familiarity to C is, of course, a big disadvantage in the eyes
> of some; maybe we should have standardized ~*A=! as syntax instead
> of 'A' to eliminate this disadvantage, despite 'A' being common
> practice (I also considered 'A, but it was less common).

I agree that if we're going to have character literals this is the
best choice, but I'm not sure about the trailing ' .

At the time it seemed to me that this was so obviously pointless an
idea that it wouldn't get through, since we had a perfectly good
syntax for character literals already.  So it goes; it's all too late
now.

> While we are at similarities to C, somebody complained that we
> standardized $ff instead of 0xff.  I considered both (plus ffH) in my
> proposal; $ff was supported by all systems I looked at, while 0xff had
> significantly less support, and ffH even less.

This one is rather painful because it makes Forth look rather like
assembly language, which perhaps is an unfortunate connotation to
reinforce.

Andrew.

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Question on CHAR and [CHAR] "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@noavailemail.cmm> - 2012-03-11 06:10 -0400
  Re: Question on CHAR and [CHAR] Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2012-03-11 06:03 -0500
  Re: Question on CHAR and [CHAR] Coos Haak <chforth@hccnet.nl> - 2012-03-11 13:09 +0100
    Re: Question on CHAR and [CHAR] "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@noavailemail.cmm> - 2012-03-12 19:43 -0400
      Re: Question on CHAR and [CHAR] "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-03-12 16:22 -1000
        Re: Question on CHAR and [CHAR] Mark Wills <markrobertwills@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-03-13 03:23 -0700
        Re: Question on CHAR and [CHAR] Josh Grams <josh@qualdan.com> - 2012-03-13 12:51 +0000
  Re: Question on CHAR and [CHAR] Josh Grams <josh@qualdan.com> - 2012-03-11 17:11 +0000
    Re: Question on CHAR and [CHAR] Jean-Bernard Faucon <jb@nospam.com> - 2012-03-11 21:34 +0100
    Re: Question on CHAR and [CHAR] anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-03-12 10:45 +0000
  Re: Question on CHAR and [CHAR] BruceMcF <agila61@netscape.net> - 2012-03-11 13:57 -0700
  Re: Question on CHAR and [CHAR] "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@noavailemail.cmm> - 2012-03-11 17:06 -0400
    Re: Question on CHAR and [CHAR] Josh Grams <josh@qualdan.com> - 2012-03-11 21:38 +0000
      Re: Question on CHAR and [CHAR] "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-03-11 14:12 -1000
    Re: Question on CHAR and [CHAR] BruceMcF <agila61@netscape.net> - 2012-03-11 18:42 -0700
    Re: Question on CHAR and [CHAR] Albert van der Horst <albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl> - 2012-03-12 11:13 +0000
      Re: Question on CHAR and [CHAR] "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@noavailemail.cmm> - 2012-03-12 19:46 -0400
        Re: Question on CHAR and [CHAR] "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-03-12 16:56 -1000
  Re: Question on CHAR and [CHAR] "Ed" <nospam@invalid.com> - 2012-03-14 16:35 +1100
    Re: Question on CHAR and [CHAR] Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2012-03-14 08:49 -0700
      Re: Question on CHAR and [CHAR] "Ed" <nospam@invalid.com> - 2012-03-15 12:29 +1100
        Re: Question on CHAR and [CHAR] "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@noavailemail.cmm> - 2012-03-15 04:11 -0400
          Re: Question on CHAR and [CHAR] "Peter Knaggs" <pjk@bcs.org.uk> - 2012-03-15 10:24 +0000
            Re: Question on CHAR and [CHAR] Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2012-03-15 06:23 -0500
              Re: Question on CHAR and [CHAR] anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-03-15 12:05 +0000
                Re: Question on CHAR and [CHAR] Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2012-03-15 08:19 -0500
          Re: Question on CHAR and [CHAR] "Ed" <nospam@invalid.com> - 2012-03-17 13:17 +1100
            Re: Question on CHAR and [CHAR] anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-03-17 15:13 +0000
              Re: Question on CHAR and [CHAR] Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2012-03-18 06:07 -0500
              Re: Question on CHAR and [CHAR] "Ed" <nospam@invalid.com> - 2012-03-18 23:01 +1100
                Re: Question on CHAR and [CHAR] anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-03-18 15:21 +0000
                Re: Question on CHAR and [CHAR] Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-03-18 23:15 +0100
        Re: Question on CHAR and [CHAR] anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-03-15 11:59 +0000
    Re: Question on CHAR and [CHAR] "Ed" <nospam@invalid.com> - 2012-03-15 12:29 +1100

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