Parsing Prefixes

Luke (docl in the #retro irc channel) has contributed an update to the prefix handling code that adds support for parsing prefixes. This allows for some interesting stuff we couldn't do before:

  : __$ ( $-n ) hex >number decimal ;
  : __% ( $-n ) binary >number decimal ;

These allow for parsing numbers as hex or binary, based on a prefix. Luke has gone much further though:

{
   variable end
   : pad 1024 here + ;
   : keep ( - ) @compiler 0; drop keepString literal, ;
   : >pad ( $-$ ) pad over getLength 1+ copy pad keep ;
   : >$ ( n- ) !@end end ++ ;
   : "? ( -f ) @end @1- char: " = ;
   : chop ( $-$ ) end -- 0 !@end ;
   : "; ( $-$ ) "? if chop >pad rdrop ;then ;
   : __" ( "-a )
     dup dup getLength + !end
     "; 32 >$ repeat "; key dup emit >$ again ; parsing prefix
}

With this, we can do strings without a leading space:

  : hello ( - ) "hello, world!" type cr ;

Luke's __" is now part of RetroForth 10.6. I've also added __$, __#, __%, and __' (parsing hex, decimal, binary, and single characters). This restores more of the functionality dropped between 9.3 and 10.0, and adds some new features to the table.

Prefixes

The Rx Core now has prefixes, and they're better than ever before. For those who aren't familiar with them from Retro 9.x, a prefix is a single character that is placed before a name. The notfound handler will check to see if a word exists without the prefix; if so, it passes the xt of the word on the stack to a prefix handler word.

Ok, so in Retro we have five basic prefixes: @ ! + - & these correspond to fetch, store, increment by, decrement by, and address of.

@ and ! correspond to @ and ! (pretty obvious); + and - corespond to +! and -!; and & corresponds to either ' or ['].

Their usage is intended to help cleanup code flow a bit. We can do things like:

&words execute ( execute 'words' )

@here ( return the value at 'here' )

@foo +bar ( increment 'bar' by the value in 'foo' )

If you want to define more prefixes, it's easy to do. For instance, say we want a prefix that returns the dictionary header of a word. notfound will give us the xt, so we can lay down a stub:

: __~ ( a-d ) ; immediate prefix

Note the two _ characters. This is a common attribute of prefix names: the must be three characters long, and start with two underscores. The word prefix moves our word to the prefixes vocabulary. This isn't necessary, but does prove useful by making it easy to disable prefixes globally.

Ok, so filling in the details:

: __~ ( a-d ) xt->d ; immediate prefix

At first glance this looks ok. Testing it reveals a problem:

: __~ ( a-d ) xt->d ; immediate prefix

: foo ~words ;

foo .s

reset

foo .s

To fix this we need to compile as a literal into a definition. Still pretty easy as far as things go because .data will do this for us:

: __~ ( a-d ) xt->d .data ; immediate prefix

: foo ~words ;

foo .s

reset

foo .s

Now we have a working prefix. Take a look at at the implementation of the default prefixes to get ideas on implementing more complex ones. Careful use can enable significant cleanups to messy code, but in some cases it will be better to use discrete words to aid overall readability. Like all advanced features, prefixes should be learned, then used where they will help.

Fossil and Captchas

I've begun moving to Fossil for my version control needs.

Rx Core: http://rx-core.org/dev/rx.fossil

Retro Forth: http://rx-core.org/dev/retroforth.fossil

The pastebin was clogged with spam posts. I deleted over 2k of them, and added a captcha to hopefully reduce the number of new ones.

Simplifying Things

Now that the VM code has been condensed and simplified, I'm turning my focus to the image. No new features, but I want a simple build process, with things bound a bit more tightly.

The work in progress can be found at http://drop.io/retroforth

So far I have a working VM, single file for building a new base image, and makefile to automate the process. I've moved files, sockets, and canvas words into this, so the core stuff now includes all the basics needed. I'll probably move 'words' here as well.

Overall it seems to be working out nicely, so I'll keep going.

Shrinking the VM

I'm working on a simplified C implementation of Ngaro; no major changes, but I'm hoping for something a bit easier to use as a base for future experiments. (And hopefully a bit easier to adapt as a skeleton for new ports, etc).

The new code is one file (retro.c), and is 841 lines long. It still has all the major stuff (console i/o, file i/o, sockets, etc), but drops the statistics tracking, endian conversion, and runtime disassembly tracing. It works nicely on my OS X box; I'll be testing on other platforms in the near future.

Expect to see this checked into the repository within the next day or so.

Online Demonstration

It's live and all links point to it now.

The code for rebuilding the retroImage.js is now in the repository.

Preparing to deploy updated online demonstration

One of the more fun parts of Retro is the online demo. Thanks to the Ngaro JS implementation, it's really easy to test Retro without needing to install it.

Unfortunately, the existing demo is now quite old. It's running a 10.2/10.3 hybrid image, which is far out of date. As part of the work done on 10.5, the various forthlets have been updated to run on the latest image, and I'm now doing final tests of a new image + current Ngaro at http://rx-core.org/jsvm/

Soon this will be rolled out to all mirrors and replace the existing demos. Also, it'll be integrated into the repo, so deploying updates should be easier in the future.