Re: Nested definitions

On 2025-07-02 19:12, Anton Ertl wrote:

Ruvim <ruvim.pinka@gmail.com> writes:

On 2025-07-02 15:37, albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl wrote:

Or it has not even know it, if [ is smart enough to compile a jump to
after ].

>
This can be tricky because the following should work:
>
   create foo [ 123 , ] [ 456 ,
>
   : bar  [ ' foo compile, 123 lit, ] ;

 Or something.  Anyway, [ and ] are used for a variety of purposes and
trying to smarten them seems fraught with pitfalls.  If one really
wants to have
 : foo ... [ : bar ... ; ] ... ;
 work, it may be better to put the smarts into : and ;.  E.g., on a
system with sections, they could switch to another section and back.

Yes, and I wonder why introducing new words like `<:` and `;>` is better than putting the smarts into `:` and `;`.

The benefit of defining a normal colon definition inside another colon
definition eludes me, however.  Maybe mutual recursion, but the need
is rare and deferred words handle that well.

As I can see, the idea is that the name of a nested definition has the limited scope — the same as a local variable, and it is not visible outside of the containing definition.
So, the program like:
   : foo
     ...
     [ : bar ... ; ]
     ...
     bar
     ...
   ;
Is equivalent to:
   get-current wordlist push-order definitions
     : bar ... ;
   set-current
     : foo
       ...
       bar
       ...
     ;
   previous
--
Ruvim