Path: csiph.com!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Paul Rubin Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth Subject: Re: I'm so conflicted... Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2016 01:06:15 -0800 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 15 Message-ID: <87a8d3g35k.fsf@nightsong.com> References: <8c9489fb-d534-4193-85c3-782aa1242fb6@googlegroups.com> <184fa626-e6d2-4d42-bc7e-ee33daeadb55@googlegroups.com> <61184b43-cfda-4863-a005-aca83e691954@googlegroups.com> <9ec56433-8b65-48ae-8c64-bed9fdde93de@googlegroups.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Injection-Info: mx02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="b6a7a1d4cd6d84096bb77634d1ade5ce"; logging-data="25200"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1+ZKRgD+4/nwdEWg8T4t4YK" User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.3 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:wWPdRFHhN8a2DkF7R9A69SfusZY= sha1:queTfRQO0/Q/wJ3yD/L9SXCLfYs= Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.forth:52581 "Elizabeth D. Rather" writes: > In polyFORTH, PAD was an offset from HERE... having an individual PAD > for every task *avoids* re-entrancy problems... It is intended as a > convenience for user programs, to provide a re-usable temporary buffer > under the sole control of the application. Why not let the user program ALLOT a chunk of memory for such purposes if it wants? How much memory did those systems typically have? I guess things are different now in that small systems have flash program memory, often leaving them with less ram (formerly called core) than the old small systems had. I think of Forth on a MSP430G2553 (512 bytes ram) or even an Arduino (2k ram) and go "wow, 80 bytes for PAD is pretty costly". Of course it's possible to declare an environmental dependency and shrink or eliminate PAD, but I don't understand why it's there in the first place.