Re: Type checking (was: The strengths of FORTH)

On Apr 8, 7:22 am, Jonah Thomas <jethom...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> > And finally, "strong.fs" couldn't take advantage of
> > overloading, because this feature introduces hundreds of additional
> > incompatibilities by changing the names of many words.

> Not a problem except while you're building StrongFortn on top of
> Forth94. *You* have to keep track of which routine you call when you use
> the name. People who use the StrongForth can figure they get your word.

Precisely. The file strong.fs builds a "StrongForth-tools" wordlist,
which is on the wordlist stack on top of FORTH-WORDLIST ... and then
proceeds to build the "StrongForth" wordlist *which is not on the
wordlist stack yet*. When addressing a StrongForth word that has
already been built, StrongForth-tools has a prefix word that is
dedicated to finding a StrongForth definition.

And when the StrongForth wordlist has reached free-standing status, so
that it can complete building itself, the word "StrongForth" is
defined in FORTH-WORDLIST or whatever is the preferred namespace
library wordlist ... which does not include StrongForth-tools in the
namespace ... so the scaffolding is left behind.