Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!lll-crg!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!decvax!decwrl!sun!wmb From: wmb@sun.uucp (Mitch Bradley) Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth Subject: Re: DOS access Message-ID: <10420@sun.uucp> Date: Sat, 13-Dec-86 21:41:00 EST Article-I.D.: sun.10420 Posted: Sat Dec 13 21:41:00 1986 Date-Received: Tue, 16-Dec-86 01:05:31 EST References: <3674@sdcc3.ucsd.EDU> Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc. Lines: 26 Summary: Portable file access from Forth For several years now, at every Forth conference I have attended, I have been pushing for a portable set of operating system file access words. The first proposal was at the 1983 FORML conference, where I presented a description of and source code for a file system interface very similar in principle to C's "stdio" package. If anybody is interested, I would be happy to send you a copy of the paper. Design goals: 1) Forth should use the operating system's native file structure, so that Forth may be used in cooperation with other system utilities. 2) The Forth words used to access files should be the same regardless of which operating system Forth is running under. So far, the system has turned out to be pretty portable; it is running under Sun's, CP/M F83, CP/M MVP-Forth, Forthmacs on the Atari ST, and Forthmacs on the Macintosh. Some porting effort is necessary, but the "gotcha's" have largely been eliminated. For suggestions about interfacing to operation system functions other than files, look through my previous posting about interfacing Forth and Unix. The same techniques have proven useful on systems other than Unix (e.g. Atari TOS and the Macintosh Toolbox). Mitch Bradley