| block |
"Block Words + extensions"blockHistorically Forth was implemented on small computers as an operating system in its own right. Mass storage was not organized in files but as a sequence of 1 KB blocks. A block was addressed with a block number. This way a diskette drive provided a few hundred blocks and if you had a fixed disk you simply had thousands of those blocks. Both program text and arbitrary data can be stored in blocks. In order to hold source text the 1K block is treated as having 16 lines with 64 charactes each. This is often referred to as a 'screen'. When loading (i.e. interpreting) a block with source text it is simply taking to be a single line of 1024 characters. The only exception to this is the word \ (begin comment to
end of line) which skips text up to the end of a 64-char line in a block.
[ANS] BLKno special info, see general notes block loader code P4_DVaR [ANS] BLOCKno special info, see general notes block loader code P4_FXco [ANS] BUFFERno special info, see general notes block loader code P4_FXco [ANS] FLUSHno special info, see general notes block loader code P4_FXco [ANS] LOADno special info, see general notes block loader code P4_FXco [ANS] SAVE-BUFFERSno special info, see general notes block loader code P4_FXco [ANS] UPDATEno special info, see general notes block loader code P4_FXco
[ANS] EMPTY-BUFFERSno special info, see general notes block loader code P4_FXco [ANS] LISTno special info, see general notes block loader code P4_FXco [ANS] SCRno special info, see general notes block loader code P4_DVaR [ANS] THRUno special info, see general notes block loader code P4_FXco
ENVIRONMENT BLOCK-EXTno special info, see general notes block ordinary constant |