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From: zbigniew2011@gmail.com (LIT)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: Actually... why =?UTF-8?B?bm90Pw==?=
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2025 11:20:31 +0000
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> It only requires a change to COMPILE,.  No change in INTERPRET.

I modified the relevant branch of INTERPRET.

>>So throughout
>>all these years since 70s FORTH could execute
>>the programs significantly faster - but they
>>were all the time selling/giving away the listings
>>that DIDN'T feature such advantageous change?
>
> In the 1970s and early 1980s the bigger problem was code size rather
> than code performance.  And if you compile a variable or constant into
> the CFA of the variable, this costs one cell, whereas compiling it
> into LIT followed by the address or value costs two cells.

Please, have a mercy... :D it's A SINGLE cell you're
talking about. Even, if (let's assume) the two bytes
may(?) have some meaning during 70s, still in the 80s -
in the era, when 16 KB of RAM, and soon later 64 KB
became de facto standard - it wasn't sane decision(?)
to cripple the compiler(s) by "saving" (literally)
a few bytes.

>>And even today the compiler creators don't apply
>>it, for no particular reason?
>
> Which compiler creators do you have in mind? Those that compile for
> MS-DOS?  With 64KB segments, they may prefer to be stingy with the
> code size.

64 KB is a whole lot compared to "savings"
of (literally) two-byte size per VARIABLE/CONSTANT
definition. Say we've got 200 of them together
in the program — so 400 bytes has been "saved"
at a cost of significantly degraded performance.

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