Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!gatech!bloom-beacon!think!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!NMFECC.ARPA!SECRIST%OAK.SAINET.MFENET From: SECRIST%OAK.SAINET.MFENET@NMFECC.ARPA Newsgroups: comp.os.cpm Subject: (none) Message-ID: <870717211155.029@nmfecc.arpa> Date: Sat, 18-Jul-87 00:11:55 EDT Article-I.D.: nmfecc.870717211155.029 Posted: Sat Jul 18 00:11:55 1987 Date-Received: Sat, 18-Jul-87 19:15:20 EDT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Distribution: world Organization: The ARPA Internet Lines: 62 Subject: CP/M Forths (and C, et al.) Date: Sat, 18-JUL-1987 00:14 EST Header-Disclaimer: I don't like my headers either ! X-VMS-Mail-To: CPM,SECRIST > In article <1251@dicome.UUCP> martino@dicome.UUCP (Mark Martino) > writes: >Someone mentioned that there is a version of Forth written in > C and it's >available in one of the CP/M sig libraries. Has anyone > else heard of this? >Do you know how I can get a copy of it? Thanks. Maybe I missed out on this thread but if you really just want PD Forth under CP/M you can get lots of help - there are several fine system in the PD (Laxen & Perry F83, Uniforth Sampler) and other useful Forths (8080 and Z80 figs, MVP Forth-79...) > Well, there is "pistol". This program compiles only under BDS C. I > tried porting it to other environments with very bad results -- > virtually every line fails lint. There is also one floating around allegedly from a UNIX system that is even worse than porting BDS: you need YACC and LEX to boot up the screen file. It might be worth trying to compile on a UNIX system - it would be a lousy performer though as Tom points out below. Has anybody ported the Pascal version of PISTOL anywhere ? It's DEC-20 Pascal and when I tried to do a minor hack for VAX/VMS Pascal I gave up. > I have never found a Forth in C worth fooling with. I saw a system called "SIXTH" on the East and West coast Forth boards in Lattice for a PC that had promise: only problem was it's core dictionary source WORDS.C has a bad checksum coming out of the ARC. If anybody has a copy of this please ship it my way and I'll ship any fruitful efforts back. Another alternative also from the boards is a small Forth-like language called MOUSE. Peter Grogono gave Pascal source for that too, but it doesn't port to VMS yet either... I'm not much for Pascal so I don't push hard. The Z80 source works fine under CP/M-80 though and it compiles down into 2K. Nice ! I can upload or FTP it someplace if there is interest. > The problems have been: > > 1. The Interpretter is very slow -- it goes from about 8 instructions > (Z-80) ending with a jump to a subroutine call in a loop (with all the > subroutine call overhead), and the registers cannot be globally > assigned. Figure an overall 10x speed loss. > > 2. No implementation I have ever found has compiled on any machine other > than that for which it was originally written. > > 3. They were all done as experiments (can Forth be written in C?) and as > such tend to be incomplete. > > Tom Almy > toma@tekgvs.tek.com > (Usual disclaimer applies) Have you experimented with Forth-like usages in any other HLLs ?! rcs