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Is there a command line Forth interpreter out there that can save words or load a startup dictionary each use?
I don't understand why things like this get posted to HN so often. This kind of program is a very common exercise in university courses and appears in countless programming books. Heck, you implemented it in C, and this exact exercise appears in K&R C. I hope this doesn't come off as snide... I just don't understand why the author would think this is something worth showing off.
There's a large class of people who can be relied on to see this as a noteworthy accomplishment -- students. More experienced hands will note the absence of range checking and error trapping.
Nice. I did one in Perl a long while back. I added sum to sum the contents of the stack (good for bill paying day) and pt for Pythagorean theorem because I was doing a lot of cable distances. Is there a command line Forth interpreter out there that can save words or load a startup dictionary each use?
I don't understand why things like this get posted to HN so often. This kind of program is a very common exercise in university courses and appears in countless programming books. Heck, you implemented it in C, and this exact exercise appears in K&R C. I hope this doesn't come off as snide... I just don't understand why the author would think this is something worth showing off.
I'm not the author of the post, I just wrote the tool. I agree with you that it's not groundbreaking technology :-) In fact, the code is extremely simple. As I mentioned in the README, I've used dc a lot and what I propose with clac is an improvement (for my taste) regarding the UI, as there's an always-visible representation of the stack that gets updated as you type. I recorded a short video to show it in action: h…
To make this clear, I would upload your video to gfycat and link the gif in your readme.
Nice. I did one in Perl a long while back. I added sum to sum the contents of the stack (good for bill paying day) and pt for Pythagorean theorem because I was doing a lot of cable distances. Is there a command line Forth interpreter out there that can save words or load a startup dictionary each use?
That's interesting: commands that consume everything in the stack. About saving/loading words: I have plans to work on that, it could be a very useful feature.
5 4 mark 3 2 1 sum -> 5 4 6[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bc_(programming_language)
[2]: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/124518/how-is-bc-di...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not the author of the post, I just wrote the tool. I agree with you that it's not groundbreaking technology :-) In fact, the code is extremely simple. As I mentioned in the README, I've used dc a lot and what I propose with clac is an improvement (for my taste) regarding the UI, as there's an always-visible representation of the stack that gets updated as you type. I recorded a short video to show it in action: h…
I just want to say great work. The parent comment here didn't realize that you drastically improved the user experience by showing the stack, which I think makes all the difference here. To make this clear, I would upload your video to gfycat and link the gif in your readme.
For those not familiar with "dc", try running dc and then running "7 100 ^ p". Arbitrary precision! One of the reasons dc doesn't print things out is so you can use it to do arithmetic in your shell scripts.