In article <3519E315.689D at ix.netcom.com>,
"Phil Roberts, Jr." <philrob at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>Riddle:
>What language was FORTH written in?
Mostly in Forth. A limited number of "primitives" got
written in
assembler, and then the rest were done using those
primitives. People
argue over the minimum number of primitives. (Of course
that depends on
the particular processor.) One commonly-used system has 31
primitives
plus five OS calls to make a minimal system. More
primitives can be
added for speed. Some existing primitives can be removed
to get a system that's easier to port to new hardware.
Obviously, if you want to get
Forth running on hardware that hasn't been debugged yet,
the fewer the primitives and the simpler the primitives the
easier it is to program
around the flaws in the chip.
Some people have taken to writing Forths in C so they won't
have to
rewrite the primitives when they switch to a new system
that already has
a C compiler. But traditionally Forths have been written
in Forth and
assembler. And typically the first step in writing a Forth
for a new
system has been to write an assembler in an existing Forth.
