Re: How could have I factored this better?

From	Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid>
Newsgroups	comp.lang.forth
Subject	Re: How could have I factored this better?
Date	2016-05-20 15:44 -0700
Organization	A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID	<871t4we4e3.fsf@jester.gateway.pace.com> (permalink)
References	<5e60dbda-f34b-4be0-bfac-d32ddc67062f@googlegroups.com>

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Darin Murphy <murphy.darin@gmail.com> writes:
> Hi everybody. I created the following program and would like to know
> how I could have factored and documented it better.

Here's my version, which possibly uses some gforth words:

    : checkneg ( n -- ) 0 < abort" need a non-negative integer" ;
    : star  ( -- ) '*' emit ;
    : stars ( n -- ) dup checkneg 0 ?do star loop ;
    : solid-box-stars { cols rows } cr
        cols checkneg
        rows checkneg
        rows 0 ?do
            cols stars cr
        loop ;

Differences from yours:

1. The stack comment in your STAR word is ( n -- ) but should be ( -- )
2. I used ABORT to break out of the error check since the number
   is invalid and there's no way to continue.  In a bigger program
   you might want to catch the error with CATCH.
3. I checked for < 0 instead of < 1, since it seems perfectly ok to
   me to print zero stars without it being an error.  That meant 
   changing the loops to ?DO.  The repeat/while stuff was clumsy.
4. I used gforth locals for the args to solid-box-stars.  Maybe
   that's controversial but it avoids some stack juggling, assuming
   you want the interface to stay what you wrote.

Thread

How could have I factored this better? Darin Murphy <murphy.darin@gmail.com> - 2016-05-20 13:09 -0700
  Re: How could have I factored this better? rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2016-05-20 16:18 -0400
    Re: How could have I factored this better? "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2016-05-20 10:25 -1000
      Re: How could have I factored this better? Darin Murphy <murphy.darin@gmail.com> - 2016-05-20 13:39 -0700
    Re: How could have I factored this better? Darin Murphy <murphy.darin@gmail.com> - 2016-05-20 21:33 -0400
  Re: How could have I factored this better? "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2016-05-20 10:23 -1000
  Re: How could have I factored this better? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2016-05-20 15:44 -0700
    Re: How could have I factored this better? "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2016-05-20 14:38 -1000
      Re: How could have I factored this better? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2016-05-20 17:49 -0700
        Re: How could have I factored this better? "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2016-05-20 14:57 -1000
          Re: How could have I factored this better? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2016-05-20 18:34 -0700
            Re: How could have I factored this better? "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2016-05-20 16:00 -1000
              Re: How could have I factored this better? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2016-05-20 20:08 -0700
                Re: How could have I factored this better? "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2016-05-20 17:24 -1000
                Re: How could have I factored this better? hughaguilar96@gmail.com - 2016-05-21 18:15 -0700
            Re: How could have I factored this better? Albert van der Horst <albert@cherry.spenarnc.xs4all.nl> - 2016-05-21 10:01 +0000
          Re: How could have I factored this better? Darin Murphy <murphy.darin@gmail.com> - 2016-05-20 22:15 -0400
            Re: How could have I factored this better? "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2016-05-20 16:46 -1000
            Re: How could have I factored this better? hughaguilar96@gmail.com - 2016-05-21 18:36 -0700
              Re: How could have I factored this better? Darin Murphy <murphy.darin@gmail.com> - 2016-05-21 22:51 -0400
                Re: How could have I factored this better? hughaguilar96@gmail.com - 2016-05-21 22:23 -0700
      Re: How could have I factored this better? Darin Murphy <murphy.darin@gmail.com> - 2016-05-20 22:43 -0400
    Re: How could have I factored this better? Darin Murphy <murphy.darin@gmail.com> - 2016-05-20 22:19 -0400
  Re: How could have I factored this better? "WJ" <w_a_x_man@yahoo.com> - 2016-05-21 22:02 +0000
    Re: How could have I factored this better? Darin Murphy <murphy.darin@gmail.com> - 2016-05-21 22:30 -0400
      Re: How could have I factored this better? humptydumpty <ouatubi@gmail.com> - 2016-05-21 19:40 -0700
  Re: How could have I factored this better? humptydumpty <ouatubi@gmail.com> - 2016-05-21 19:38 -0700
    Re: How could have I factored this better? Darin Murphy <murphy.darin@gmail.com> - 2016-05-21 23:06 -0400
      Re: How could have I factored this better? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2016-05-21 20:59 -0700
        Re: How could have I factored this better? Darin Murphy <murphy.darin@gmail.com> - 2016-05-22 03:30 -0400
          Re: How could have I factored this better? "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2016-05-21 23:14 -1000
  Re: How could have I factored this better? humptydumpty <ouatubi@gmail.com> - 2016-05-27 03:54 -0700

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