Re: Average of a [stack]

Buzz McCool <buzz_mccool@yahoo.com> writes:

On 6/7/2024 1:32 PM, LIT wrote:

: AVG  DEPTH 0 SWAP DUP >R 0 DO SWAP + LOOP R> / . ;

>
I coincidentally was doing averaging for the floating point stack when I
ran across this posting. Other than adding stack comments, how can I
improve this word?

Eliminate DEPTH, e.g., by replacing it with a count of the elements
you want to average over, or better, write a word that takes only a
descriptor of, e.g., an array in memory, and averages over the array.

Why should DEPTH not be used in this way?  Because it means that AVG_
consumes the whole stack and is useless in a word that keeps some
temporary data deeper in the stack when it calls another word, an
idiomatic way of using Forth.

- anton
--
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