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Date:      Wed, 30 Apr 1997 21:08:53 +0930 (CST)
From:      Michael Smith <msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au>
To:        jkh@time.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard)
Cc:        msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au, bde@zeta.org.au, config@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Startup userconfig parsing
Message-ID:  <199704301138.VAA28537@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au>
In-Reply-To: <26868.862397611@time.cdrom.com> from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at "Apr 30, 97 03:53:31 am"

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Jordan K. Hubbard stands accused of saying:
> Yes, that it most unfortunately does. :( Last time Poul-Henning was
> making semi-serious noises about this, I looked into it quickly and
> then looked away again just as quickly.  The entire file I/O system
> would need to be hacked off with a knife and reimplimented in a much
> more kernel-centric context, for one thing, and we don't even want to
> talk about the process control. :)

I went back to about Tcl 3 or 4, and even back then it was Way Too Big.

> The problem likes not with forth, but with its available public
> implementations: They all suck, in one crucial way or another. :-(

I was afraid of that. 8(

> them off for right now, despite some compelling speed advantages (but
> hey - this ain't for racing, right?  It's for getting to the race
> track :-).

Yup.  Specifically, it's meant to provide a parser, and some simple
from-userspace kernel scripting.

> And finally, the one I was actually playing with recently, is
> "atlast"  Atlast (by John Walker of AutoCAD fame) is actually
> very small, very easy to embed into C (in fact, that was its
> purpose) and very easy to add new words (in C) to.

All desirable attributes.  n fact, in the first draft of the message I
sent you, I had attached the first few paragraphs from the ATLAST
README 8) I was also looking at the 'diesel' interpreter he did, which
would probably be more Bruce's style 8)

> I finally gave up on atlast as not a "real enough" implementation of
> forth for a complete sysinstall type solution, but perhaps it's enough
> for bootstrap purposes.  

It would need to be pruned somewhat, but it's certainly an option
worth considering.

> Otherwise, we could ask Mitch for his forth.  I think that'd
> be the best "full forth" solution, if we even want to go that
> route.

What sort of size are we talking about?

> 					Jordan

-- 
]] Mike Smith, Software Engineer        msmith@gsoft.com.au             [[
]] Genesis Software                     genesis@gsoft.com.au            [[
]] High-speed data acquisition and      (GSM mobile)     0411-222-496   [[
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