Re: VALUE and TO implementation

In article <87le18rurj.fsf@nightsong.com>,
Paul Rubin  <no.email@nospam.invalid> wrote:

albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl writes:

Numbers (also denotations, such as strings)  must be smart.

>
I've thought of having non-smart numbers in a small Forth.  Instead of
123 you would say # 123 or something similar, where # is a parsing word
that emits LIT and the number.  I remember that the eForth metacompiler
does something like that, to handle the case where the host and target
processors have differing number representations (e.g. word sizes).

I don't think that would count as non-smart numbers.
A long time ago I demonstrated handling denotations (numbers)
in INTERPRET . Reminder denotations are constant and the same
in either mode.
It requires that there is a separate compilation stack.

As soon as INTERPRET detects that a word (obviously immediate)
leaves something on the stack, and it is in compilation state,
it compiles one or more literals.
That is in the context of PREFIXes. 0x is a prefix immediate.
0x1234 gets control and generates hex 1234 . INTERPRET takes
cares of the rest.
Bottom line, that is the single location in the whole Forth
where STATE is inspected.

In ciforth I don't go that far, but all denotations ends in a
call to LITERAL/DLITERAL which comes close.

Groetjes Albert

>

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