Forth

1
Forth

• By Aaron Shaw

2
Overview of Forth

• History
• Basic Syntax and Semantics
• Source Code
• Language Use
• Advantages and Disadvantages
• Likes and dislikes

3
History of Forth

• Created by Charles H. Moore in 1968
• First started being used in early 1970s
• Standards were established in 1979 and 1984
• ANSI unified standards in 1994 (ANSI FORTH)
• Named because IBM 1130 system only allowed 5
  characters in a filename

4
Forth Basic Syntax and Semantics

• Uses prefix notation
• 3 2 4 is 3 2 4 .
• Entirely based on a stack
• 2 6 4 10
• 3 6
• Uses keywords and a dictionary to determine
  actions
• . HEX .

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Forth Source Code

• hi .hello world!
• hi hello world
• DECIMAL 5 6 7 . 47
• SEE

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Use of Forth

• Was used heavily in the 70s and 80s
• Built into its own chipset once
• Was the basis of MacFORTH and the home computer
  Jupiter ACE
• Currently has been used with .NET

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Advantages and Disadvantages

• Very useful for stack related programs
• Very powerful
• Difficult to learn
• Hard to write long, more useful programs

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Likes and Dislikes

• Easy to pick up the basics
• Could be very powerful
• Anything more then basic math becomes complicated
• Difficult to make useful programs

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Conclusion

• Its interesting, useful if taken time to learn
• Can be used well, but takes a lot of work

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Bibliography

• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forth_28programming_
  language29
• http//www.ultratechnology.com/
• http//www.dataman.ro/?page_id37
• http//galileo.phys.virginia.edu/classes/551.jvn.f
  all01/primer.htm