Re: What's right with FORTH and wrong with c.l.f.

In article <jOydnR8JLcygfIXVnZ2dnUVZ_vGdnZ2d@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
Richard Owlett  <rowlett@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>{Grasshopper, capitalization in subject line significant :}
>
>What is so right with Forth that it *OVERRIDES* ALL negative comments?
>
>Obviously the :  ; pair.
>What other language morphs to match the "real" world so well in a such
>well defined manner?
>
>
>What's wrong with c.l.f. ?
>
>/begin *RANT*
>A close relative of N.I.H. Syndrome.
>
>e g
>I'm interested in a variety of problems ranging from subsets of speech
>recognition to sources of GPS errors and their significance.
>
>What do they have in common?
>Someone else has compiled raw data. It's available in ASCII format.
>That requires me to parse it.
>I doubt anyone would claim string handling as a Forth forte.

There are basically two possibilities.
1 It is simple. Get by with static allocation and $@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 $! $C+ $^ $/
2 It is largish. You will find that a dedicated string packet for
the task is a small part of the task, and less work than coercing
and studying a large packet with a lot you don't need.

Even if it is largish, using perl, awk or sed as a preprocessor
may be the appropriate way for your problem.

>I've quit asking questions on c.l.f. as typical answer has been
>
>"DON'T DO THAT"

You get that answer if you pose abstract questions.
Forth is very good, but only at answering concrete questions.
The concrete answer may very well be "use awk, not Forth".
Part of the consequence is that Forth is a toolkit, where you
have to choose, is that you get a feeling for when a tool is not
appropriate.


>
>/end *RANT*


--
-- 
Albert van der Horst, UTRECHT,THE NETHERLANDS
Economic growth -- like all pyramid schemes -- ultimately falters.
albert@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 &=n http://home.hccnet.nl/a.w.m.van.der.horst