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

On Apr 30, 5:14 pm, Richard Owlett <rowl...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> 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.

However, parsing data in ASCII format *is* a Forth forte.

Indeed, one reason that there are fewer string handling resources in
Forth than in so many other languages is that for so many tasks that
are viewed as "string handling tasks" in other languages, Forth has
simpler, more direct ways to accomplish the objective, so there are
fewer people who need that toolkit.

Then add on top the lack of a de facto library management standard,
and on top of that the fact that for those who only need to do a
specific, people with a distinct set of concrete string tasks can
solve it from scratch with tools like those in TOOL2002. If that is
auxiliary to their main task, then once its solved, they may rarely
need to revisit it. So instead of investing the time and effort into
learning and importing a general purpose string handling toolkit and
than using 5% of it, they build a much simpler special purpose string
handling toolkit and use 100% of it.