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Re: Specifying interfaces of "read-ahead" words

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"Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> writes:
>> Sure, but "<spaces>name" does not come from the _stack_ so why is it
>> shown on the input side of a _stack signature_.
>
>Because it isn't just a *stack* signature, it's a description of the 
>arguments for the word, in and out. I agree it's not all that beautiful, 
>but it's a compromise that the original Forth94 TC came up with, and a 
>lot of people understand it at this point.

Yes.  It's called "stack notation" because that's where it originates,
and the majority of uses just deal with stacks.  If you want a more
general name, you might call is "stack and parsed-text notation", but
I guess most people prefer to stick with "stack notation" even if that
is not 100% accurate.

I also think that, once you accept that it does not just deal with
stacks, it's pretty logical that one puts the inputs to the left of
"--" and the outputs to the right.  Sure, one could have a separated
parsed-input notation, but does that buy anything?

Concerning "confusing", I think that, once the convention is learned,
either one may be confusing, and once you have learned a particular
one, it will not be confusing.

However, I find it suboptimal that the standard is not consistent in
it's use of unified or separated notation.  Some things are unified,
some are separated.  E.g., consider a hypothetical word that would be
written in unified notation:

Execution: ( x1 C:orig F:r1 R:x2 "<spaces>name" -- x2 C:dest F:r2 R:x1 )

or in separated notation:

( x1 -- x2 ) ( C: orig -- dest ) ( F: r1 -- r2 ) ( R: x2 -- x1 ) 
    ( IS: "<spaces>name" -- )

In the standard it would be (I think:)

( x1 "<spaces>name" -- x2 ) ( C: orig -- dest ) ( F: r1 -- r2 ) ( R: x2 -- x1 )

This is mitigated by the fact that most words act on only one or two stacks.


-- 
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 2013: http://www.euroforth.org/ef13/

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Specifying interfaces of "read-ahead" words Mark Wills <forthfreak@gmail.com> - 2013-02-05 05:38 -0800
  Re: Specifying interfaces of "read-ahead" words Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2013-02-05 06:09 -0800
    Re: Specifying interfaces of "read-ahead" words Mark Wills <forthfreak@gmail.com> - 2013-02-05 06:29 -0800
      Re: Specifying interfaces of "read-ahead" words Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2013-02-05 07:02 -0800
        Re: Specifying interfaces of "read-ahead" words Mark Wills <forthfreak@gmail.com> - 2013-02-05 07:17 -0800
          Re: Specifying interfaces of "read-ahead" words Josh Grams <josh@qualdan.com> - 2013-02-05 21:07 +0000
  Re: Specifying interfaces of "read-ahead" words Coos Haak <chforth@hccnet.nl> - 2013-02-05 18:18 +0100
    Re: Specifying interfaces of "read-ahead" words Mark Wills <forthfreak@gmail.com> - 2013-02-05 13:54 -0800
      Re: Specifying interfaces of "read-ahead" words "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2013-02-05 14:02 -1000
        Re: Specifying interfaces of "read-ahead" words Mark Wills <forthfreak@gmail.com> - 2013-02-05 23:19 -0800
          Re: Specifying interfaces of "read-ahead" words Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2013-02-06 06:59 -0800
        Re: Specifying interfaces of "read-ahead" words anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2013-02-06 15:34 +0000
      Re: Specifying interfaces of "read-ahead" words Doug Hoffman <glidedog@gmail.com> - 2013-02-05 20:48 -0500
        Re: Specifying interfaces of "read-ahead" words Mark Wills <forthfreak@gmail.com> - 2013-02-05 23:17 -0800
          Re: Specifying interfaces of "read-ahead" words Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2013-02-06 00:01 -0800
            Re: Specifying interfaces of "read-ahead" words Mark Wills <forthfreak@gmail.com> - 2013-02-06 01:02 -0800
            Re: Specifying interfaces of "read-ahead" words Doug Hoffman <glidedog@gmail.com> - 2013-02-06 04:24 -0500
        Re: Specifying interfaces of "read-ahead" words Doug Hoffman <glidedog@gmail.com> - 2013-02-06 07:39 -0500
      Re: Specifying interfaces of "read-ahead" words "Peter Knaggs" <pjk@bcs.org.uk> - 2013-02-11 08:07 +0000
        Re: Specifying interfaces of "read-ahead" words Mark Wills <forthfreak@gmail.com> - 2013-02-11 07:10 -0800
          Re: Specifying interfaces of "read-ahead" words "Clyde W. Phillips Jr." <cwpjr02@gmail.com> - 2013-02-11 15:51 -0800
            Re: Specifying interfaces of "read-ahead" words Mark Wills <forthfreak@gmail.com> - 2013-02-11 23:05 -0800
              Re: Specifying interfaces of "read-ahead" words "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2013-02-11 22:03 -1000
          Re: Specifying interfaces of "read-ahead" words "Peter Knaggs" <pjk@bcs.org.uk> - 2013-02-13 07:39 +0000
            Re: Specifying interfaces of "read-ahead" words Mark Wills <forthfreak@gmail.com> - 2013-02-13 00:23 -0800
              Re: Specifying interfaces of "read-ahead" words "Peter Knaggs" <pjk@bcs.org.uk> - 2013-02-13 18:08 +0000
  Re: Specifying interfaces of "read-ahead" words "Clyde W. Phillips Jr." <cwpjr02@gmail.com> - 2013-02-09 13:49 -0800
    Re: Specifying interfaces of "read-ahead" words Coos Haak <chforth@hccnet.nl> - 2013-02-10 00:17 +0100
      Re: Specifying interfaces of "read-ahead" words "Clyde W. Phillips Jr." <cwpjr02@gmail.com> - 2013-02-09 17:20 -0800
      Re: Specifying interfaces of "read-ahead" words "Peter Knaggs" <pjk@bcs.org.uk> - 2013-02-11 08:29 +0000
        Re: Specifying interfaces of "read-ahead" words anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2013-02-11 14:27 +0000

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