Re: [colorforth] ?dup

[Jonah Thomas <j2thomas@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Samuel A. Falvo II wrote:
> Arthur W. Green wrote:

> > > Perhaps the optimizing word  ?dup  could be renamed  /dup . The
> > > original mnemonic intention was: is a  dup  necessary? The new
> > > mnemonic would be: cancel  dup  if possible.

> > Personally, I find ?DUP more intuitive. My first impulse is that /DUP
> > has something to do with division. But, either one is fine by me.

> I would have chosen ?dup<- -- a bit lengthy and awkward to type, perhaps, 
> but it's a bit symbolic and more or less follows other established Forth 
> conventions.  The ? *prefix* indicates that the word *optionally* does 
> something.  In this case, it'd be dup<- , which to me reads as 
> 'backspace over DUP'.  But, hey, that's just me.  :D

I'd suggest it's a question of practicality.  Will you want to add 
enough translation stuff to let you run traditional Forth?  It hardly 
seems likely.  So it doesn't matter for porting code.  If you do 
decide to port code inward, you can write a translator to do it 
automatically -- maybe something that does some of the work and you do 
the rest.  You could expect to wind up with something that isn't as 
good as what you'd write from scratch, but ?DUP wouldn't be an issue 
since it would get automatically changed; you'd just keep track of 
which side of the tranlator you were looking at.

Another issue is porting Forth programmers.  When it starts looking 
like a commercial reality we'll get some Forth programmers coming in 
as late adapters.  Things like a changed ?DUP would slow them down a 
bit.  But it would only slow down people who were used to traditional 
Forth, and at that point they should be a small fraction of the new 
ColorForth programmers.

The third issue is whether it confuses people who are working on it 
now, particularly ones who switch among forths.

So if it's easy to change, then the sooner the better.  But if it's 
hard to change it may not be worth doing.



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