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From: Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: Given a string, create word with that name (in ANS Forth)?
Date: Sat, 24 Sep 2016 23:45:48 -0700
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Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> writes:
> Perhaps so, but the system might not then have fit in the tiny space
> available on small computers.  Every byte was valuable, and every byte
> occupied by the Forth system was a byte that couldn't be used by the
> application programmer.

The really tiny systems might not have supported word lists, which is
about where generality starts making sense.  But, as someone mentioned,
Forth dictionary implementations generally had the general interfaces as
internal factors even if they weren't exposed to the user.  So it starts
to sound like burying a tool.