Re: [stack] Overview of Joy (was Concatenative Languages: a New M ailing List)

Christian Tismer — 2000-05-08 20:14:44

wtanksley@... wrote:
...
> Of course, I also have to note that your syntax is impossible; the way you
> have it written, the language would have to execute 'square' before it's
> defined. If you want to have a word which defines other words, its use
> would look something like:
>
> [dup *] "square" define

/square { dup mult } def

or even

/square { dup mult } bind def

wouldn't that be nearly exactly the same in Postscript lingo?
Yes I cannot figure out only minor differences.

What's new in Joy, just that it is simpler (and maybe clearer?)

ciao - chris

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wtanksley@bigfoot.com — 2000-05-08 20:23:40

From: Christian Tismer [mailto:tismer@...]

>wtanksley@... wrote:
>...
>> Of course, I also have to note that your syntax is
>> impossible; the way you
>> have it written, the language would have to execute 'square'
>> before it's
>> defined. If you want to have a word which defines other
>> words, its use would look something like:

>> [dup *] "square" define

>/square { dup mult } def
>or even
>/square { dup mult } bind def

>wouldn't that be nearly exactly the same in Postscript lingo?

Nearly, except the syntax I used depended on strings, while yours depends on
"symbols". No big deal.

>What's new in Joy, just that it is simpler (and maybe clearer?)

Nothing's new in Joy -- that's the point of this list. (Almost) everything
its documentation discusses applies very well to Forth, HP-RPL, and
Postscript. Joy itself isn't a very good programming language, because it
lacks so many error-detecting and efficiency features. But that's fine --
it's a great language to illustrate aspects of theory which I've never
before seen.

Now I understand some of the reasons why Forth is so much fun to program in.

>ciao - chris

-Billy