Re: [stack] Cat article submission to Doctor Dobbs Journal

Christopher Diggins <[email protected]> wrote:
> Stevan Apter <[email protected]> wrote:
>  > i'm still not sure in what sense or under
>  > what restrictions Forth or Postscript satisfy the definition.

>  Yeah, that's the tricky part. I believe there are valid phrases in
>  Forth which can't be concatenated (and/or split) to create other valid
>  phrases (e.g. using BRANCH). I don't know about PostScript.

By my old definition, Forth is entirely concatenative and mostly flat.
By the new definition, Forth does have a concatenative sublanguage
which contains most of Forth. (The new definition doesn't need to
worry about "flat", which IMO is a good thing.)

>  arrays. However, there are no *literal* quotations. Rather there are
>  operators for constructing quoted programs (i.e. "{" and "}"). A
>  somewhat pedantic difference but one worth noting I think.

I didn't know that!

Does that mean that Postscript quotations can't nest?

>  On another topic I wonder if in PostScript you can write:
>  \f { { } def
>  \g { } } def
>  This would possibly break concatenativity.

I don't see why.

>  - Christopher

-Wm