Re: The magical number seven (was: Tiny regular expressions code)

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From	mhx@iae.nl (Marcel Hendrix)
Subject	Re: The magical number seven (was: Tiny regular expressions code)
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Date	Tue, 21 Oct 2014 20:11:00 +0200
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Just Ian <superian@gmail.com> wrote Re: The magical number seven (was: Tiny regular expressions code)

> Marcel Hendrix said:

>> 'Footsteps in an empty valley'

>> -DIGIT \ 27 words
>> NUMBER \ 53 words
>> WORD   \ 48 words

[..]

> By coincidence, I was looking at 'Footsteps..' recently. As well as the comment
> from someone else that if you include the shorter words, the average is seven-ish, 
> I don't think anyone would claim cmFORTH to be anything other 
> than a quick hack to see if the hardware works.

I should be obvious from my post that I am convinced that [TOPIC] is not 
illustrated by 'Footsteps ... .'  I listed the reasons in the OP. For all 
other purposes Lars has provided the histogram and exact (hopefully) count (applause!)

Seven words is not a lot, and IMO it is obvious Charles Moore is not writing such 
short definitions out of principle. I'm pretty sure that e.g. -DIGIT, NUMBER 
and WORD have comparable word counts on small systems by other authors.

> Who can forget the splitting of control structures between words, for example? 
> I think it was MAX and MIN that jumped into the middle of the other, but it 
> could have been any similar comparison words.
[..]

Why the party trick when he just needed 'a quick hack to see if the hardware 
works?' 

>> and also not artefacts of metacompiling like : @ @ ; .

> I would say that's not an artefact, that's because on the hardware, the def
> inition of '@' is '@'! Without that and the other similar ones, you couldn't 
> use any of the primitive words interactively.

Maybe 'artefact' is a wrong choice of word.
I consider ": @ @ ;" atypical when the intention is to get a feeling
for how normal well-factored Forth code should look. Anybody would (need to)
write it like that.

-marcel

Thread

Tiny regular expressions code Hans Bezemer <the.beez.speaks@gmail.com> - 2014-10-13 18:15 +0200
  Re: Tiny regular expressions code Hans Bezemer <the.beez.speaks@gmail.com> - 2014-10-13 18:18 +0200
    Re: Tiny regular expressions code Pablo Hugo Reda <pabloreda@gmail.com> - 2014-10-13 09:32 -0700
    Re: Tiny regular expressions code Howerd <howerdo@yahoo.co.uk> - 2014-10-13 11:18 -0700
      Re: Tiny regular expressions code Hans Bezemer <the.beez.speaks@gmail.com> - 2014-10-13 20:36 +0200
        Re: Tiny regular expressions code Howerd <howerdo@yahoo.co.uk> - 2014-10-13 11:53 -0700
  Re: Tiny regular expressions code Hans Bezemer <the.beez.speaks@gmail.com> - 2014-10-13 22:14 +0200
  Re: Tiny regular expressions code mhx@iae.nl (Marcel Hendrix) - 2014-10-13 22:59 +0200
    Re: Tiny regular expressions code Hans Bezemer <the.beez.speaks@gmail.com> - 2014-10-13 23:11 +0200
  Re: Tiny regular expressions code albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl (Albert van der Horst) - 2014-10-14 09:22 +0000
    Re: Tiny regular expressions code Hans Bezemer <the.beez.speaks@gmail.com> - 2014-10-14 17:43 +0200
      Re: Tiny regular expressions code albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl (Albert van der Horst) - 2014-10-14 16:27 +0000
        Re: Tiny regular expressions code albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl (Albert van der Horst) - 2014-10-15 09:48 +0000
          Re: Tiny regular expressions code Hans Bezemer <the.beez.speaks@gmail.com> - 2014-10-15 17:38 +0200
            Re: Tiny regular expressions code albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl (Albert van der Horst) - 2014-10-16 09:20 +0000
  Re: Tiny regular expressions code josv@planet.nl - 2014-10-17 05:03 -0700
    Re: Tiny regular expressions code Hans Bezemer <the.beez.speaks@gmail.com> - 2014-10-17 17:48 +0200
      Re: Tiny regular expressions code Hans Bezemer <the.beez.speaks@gmail.com> - 2014-10-17 19:20 +0200
        Re: Tiny regular expressions code anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2014-10-18 15:43 +0000
          Re: Tiny regular expressions code Hans Bezemer <the.beez.speaks@gmail.com> - 2014-10-18 18:53 +0200
          Re: Tiny regular expressions code hughaguilar96@yahoo.com - 2014-10-18 19:19 -0700
            Re: Tiny regular expressions code Hans Bezemer <the.beez.speaks@gmail.com> - 2014-10-19 14:52 +0200
              Re: Tiny regular expressions code Hans Bezemer <the.beez.speaks@gmail.com> - 2014-10-19 15:25 +0200
                Re: Tiny regular expressions code Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2014-10-19 21:14 +0200
                Re: Tiny regular expressions code Hans Bezemer <the.beez.speaks@gmail.com> - 2014-10-20 00:17 +0200
              Re: Tiny regular expressions code albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl (Albert van der Horst) - 2014-10-19 17:10 +0000
                Re: Tiny regular expressions code Hans Bezemer <the.beez.speaks@gmail.com> - 2014-10-19 19:59 +0200
          Re: Tiny regular expressions code Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2014-10-19 09:31 -0500
            The magical number seven (was: Tiny regular expressions code) anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2014-10-20 09:10 +0000
              Re: The magical number seven (was: Tiny regular expressions code) m.a.m.hendrix@tue.nl - 2014-10-20 03:13 -0700
                Re: The magical number seven (was: Tiny regular expressions code) mhx@iae.nl (Marcel Hendrix) - 2014-10-20 20:19 +0200
                Re: The magical number seven Lars Brinkhoff <lars.spam@nocrew.org> - 2014-10-21 08:56 +0200
                Re: The magical number seven Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2014-10-21 11:44 +0200
                Re: The magical number seven (was: Tiny regular expressions code) Just Ian <superian@gmail.com> - 2014-10-21 07:06 -0700
                Re: The magical number seven (was: Tiny regular expressions code) mhx@iae.nl (Marcel Hendrix) - 2014-10-21 20:11 +0200
                Re: The magical number seven Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2014-10-26 04:27 -0500
              Re: The magical number seven (was: Tiny regular expressions code) Hans Bezemer <the.beez.speaks@gmail.com> - 2014-10-20 17:28 +0200
                Re: The magical number seven (was: Tiny regular expressions code) anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2014-10-20 16:25 +0000
                Re: The magical number seven (was: Tiny regular expressions code) "Rod Pemberton" <buzzoff@nonamewhichexists.cmm> - 2014-10-20 16:36 -0400
                Re: The magical number seven "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2014-10-20 12:19 -1000
                Re: The magical number seven "Rod Pemberton" <buzzoff@nonamewhichexists.cmm> - 2014-10-21 01:47 -0400
                Re: The magical number seven "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2014-10-20 20:31 -1000
                Re: The magical number seven albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl (Albert van der Horst) - 2014-10-21 09:06 +0000
                Re: The magical number seven "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2014-10-21 08:47 -1000
                Re: The magical number seven "Rod Pemberton" <buzzoff@nonamewhichexists.cmm> - 2014-10-22 02:21 -0400
                Re: The magical number seven (was: Tiny regular expressions code) Hans Bezemer <the.beez.speaks@gmail.com> - 2014-10-21 10:29 +0200
                Re: The magical number seven (was: Tiny regular expressions code) Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2014-10-21 11:34 +0200
                Re: The magical number seven Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2014-10-26 04:41 -0500
                Re: The magical number seven Hans Bezemer <the.beez.speaks@gmail.com> - 2014-10-26 12:07 +0100
                Re: The magical number seven Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2014-10-26 13:58 -0500
                Re: The magical number seven (was: Tiny regular expressions code) hughaguilar96@yahoo.com - 2014-10-20 16:34 -0700
                Re: The magical number seven Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2014-10-26 04:33 -0500
                Re: The magical number seven Hans Bezemer <the.beez.speaks@gmail.com> - 2014-10-26 12:12 +0100
              Re: The magical number seven Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2014-10-26 04:24 -0500
          Re: Tiny regular expressions code mhx@iae.nl (Marcel Hendrix) - 2014-10-19 17:10 +0200
      Re: Tiny regular expressions code Hans Bezemer <the.beez.speaks@gmail.com> - 2014-10-18 16:02 +0200
        Re: Tiny regular expressions code josv@planet.nl - 2014-10-18 07:50 -0700
  Re: Tiny regular expressions code Hans Bezemer <the.beez.speaks@gmail.com> - 2014-10-18 17:27 +0200
  Re: Tiny regular expressions code the_gavino_himself <visphatesjava@gmail.com> - 2014-11-08 19:24 -0800
  Re: Tiny regular expressions code the_gavino_himself <visphatesjava@gmail.com> - 2014-11-08 20:42 -0800

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