Ok. The RSTS Forth is more than FIG-FORTH; it adds the FORTH-83 (FORTH-79?) language standard features. I used it for several applications, the biggest by far is SDA, an interactive RSTS crash dump analyzer. 4600 lines of code... It should be in the kit. paul

There are a few reasons most don't like Forth: 1. no type checking ( suppose to save dumb programmers ) 2. Often, no floating point. ( Math has to be well thought out but when done right in integer math it has few bugs ). 3. Few libraries ( One can often make code to attach to things like C libraries but it is a pain in the A. Often if you know what needs to be done it is easier and better to write your own low level code. Things like USB are tough to get at the low level stuff, though ) 4. To many cryptic symbols ( : , . ! @ ; ) 5. To much stack noise ( dup swap rot over ) I still use Forth for all my hobby work. It is the easiest language to get something working of any of the languages I've worked with. I recently wanted to work on some 4004 source code, I got my hands on( really hard to find ). I needed to write an assembler ( and disassembler to check it ), a simulator and instrumentation to emulate the target hardware. The source code was poorly printed such that letters like P and F, 0 and C were easily confused. I was able to quickly try different combinations as I was able to edit source, assemble and display emulation results in milliseconds. I can't think of anything in any other language that would be that flexible. When running the emulation, one could make any number of shortcuts to deal with complicated stimulus and display. Each targeted exactly to the current problem to be solved, not too much and not too little. Learning to be effective with Forth has a relatively steep learning curve. You have to understand the compiler and how it deals with your source code. You need to get used to proper comments to handle stack usage. You need to learn how to write short easily test words ( routines ). It is clearly not just a backwards LISP. It is not Python either. Dwight ________________________________ From: cctalk <cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org> on behalf of Bill Gunshannon via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Saturday, March 28, 2020 6:39 AM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Subject: Re: DIBOL and RPG for RSTS On 3/27/20 8:48 PM, Paul Koning wrote: I saw that FORTH was there but, as I said, FORTH didn't really interest me beyond the project I had that died on the vine thanks to the greed of the IEEE. Maybe I'll look in to that again sometime, but it would be low on my list of priorities at this point. I actually have FORTH on a number of different systems but have done little beyond comparing them. bill

RPN is just there to simplify the interpreter and compiler. It takes some getting used to. Many claim that infixed is more natural but it is clumsy. One has to come up with a bunch of rules to make work. A + B * C multiply B and C an then add A. C B * A + in Forth Telling someone to do the calculation: Take C and B, multiply them together then take A and add it. ( how unnatural is that ) What if A B and C were not numbers but instead were function and procedures that returned values. Lets say C turned on a light and returned the current used. B multiplied it by the line voltage and A was a previous Watt total. Would you still write it like the first, knowing it would get the right result because of some order rule? Of course, in Forth you'd never use A B and C for such names but you could if you never expected anyone to read it. ( I've seen Forth look like that ) In Forth you always do things left to right. It is much less error prone. Well written Forth looks like sentences where you are telling the computer what to do and in what order. Good high level code rarely has SWAP or ROT in it. I had a friend that was tasked with writing code to do one of the error correction routines. He wrote it in Forth and gave it to his manager. His manager said "There must be a mistake, you have given me the definition of the code. Where is the code?" What better complement could a programmer get. I always strive to get to that level. Dwight ________________________________ From: cctalk <cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org> on behalf of Kevin Monceaux via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Saturday, March 28, 2020 12:27 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <CCTalk at ClassicCmp.org> Subject: Re: DIBOL and RPG for RSTS On Sat, Mar 28, 2020 at 06:55:34PM +0000, dwight via cctalk wrote: I've looked at a few example Forth programs in the past. I usually cringed and quickly moved on. I should have done a little more research back then. This thread inspired me to take a closer look. Once I discovered that Forth uses reverse Polish notation, I'm intrigued. I was introduced to HP RPN calculators in high school, and eventually bought my own HP 11C. These days on Linux I use Orpie, a ncurses full screen RPN calculator. -- Kevin http://www.RawFedDogs.net http://www.Lassie.xyz http://www.WacoAgilityGroup.org Bruceville, TX What's the definition of a legacy system? One that works! Errare humanum est, ignoscere caninum.

No, it certainly isn't Python, which is my other major fast-coding language. FORTH started as a small fast real-time control language; its inventor worked in an observatory and needed a way to control telescopes. It's still used for that today. I recently went looking for FORTH processors in FPGA, there are several. One that looked very good was designed for robotics and machine vision work. The designer posted both the FPGA design and the software, which includes a TCP/IP (or UDP/IP ?) stack. He reports that the code is both much smaller and faster than compiled C code running on conventional FPGA embedded processors. paul

On Sat, Mar 28, 2020 at 06:55:34PM +0000, dwight via cctalk wrote: LISP is another language that I shied away from in the past, but finally started exploring a while back. There's another point in its favor. I've tried to develop a fondness for Python over the years. It hasn't happened yet. The languages I've used most are probably Perl and Clipper. At work before we retired our mainframe I did a little COBOL, EasyTrieve, and Gener/OL programming. Now that we've migrated to an IBM i platform, I've done some CL and RPG programming. -- Kevin http://www.RawFedDogs.net http://www.Lassie.xyz http://www.WacoAgilityGroup.org Bruceville, TX What's the definition of a legacy system? One that works! Errare humanum est, ignoscere caninum.