Forth – is it still relevant?
14 days ago
- #Forth
- #Programming
- #Multi-threading
- Forth lost out to C due to broader appeal, standardization, and support ecosystem.
- Bill Muench created eForth for simplicity and educational purposes.
- Dictionary is modeled as an array of words for easier search and execution.
- Data and Return Stacks are implemented as arrays with push, pop, and indexing methods.
- No vocabulary or meta-compilation to focus on core concepts.
- Multi-threading and message passing introduced in version 5.0.
- Thread pool size defaults to the number of cores.
- Message passing uses pthread mutex for synchronization.
- Core implementation of eForth is in C/C++ for cross-platform support.
- Code objects represent Forth words with fields for name, execution token, and parameters.
- Polymorphic classes extend Code for literals, variables, strings, and branching.
- Inner interpreter executes words recursively or via lambda functions.
- Outer interpreter searches dictionary and handles compilation or execution.
- Array implementation differs from traditional Forth memory access.
- Dynamic arrays enable expanding variables and self-morphing code.
- Modern Forth implementations aim to be more accessible with fewer lines of code.
- Multi-threading support includes task creation, starting, joining, and message passing.
- Performance benchmarks compare different threading and memory models.
- Memory management considerations for C++ standard libraries on resource-constrained devices.
- Refactoring efforts focus on cross-platform compatibility and performance optimization.