Win32Forth

The Internal Architecture of Win32Forth

Introduction

One of the best descriptions of Forth on the web that explained the architecture of Forth systems (in terms even I could understand) was Brad Rodriguez'  "Moving Forth" which first appeared in  The Computer Journal #59 (January/February 1993). I'm immensely grateful for his permission to modify his original work and publish this set of articles on the internals of Win32Forth. Please take the time to read the originals; they contain much more in-depth information on building Forth systems than is contained here. I've been very selective in the sections that I've used.

I lay claim to little originality. The diagrams I have recreated to add some colour and to allow them to be printed with better resolution. I am also no wordsmith; any errors in here are probably all mine. Be as good to click on the top left icon on these pages if there's anything you spot that's misspelled (British spelling excepted; I'll have no other), technically wrong, unclear or just plain incomprehensible. I really want to know.

Since Tom Zimmer left Win32Forth in the public domain, there have been an number of internal changes to Win32Forth from his last version (version 4.2); these articles outline the architecture as of version 6.10 and above. As with most things in life, there's no warranty. In layman's terms, if using Win32Forth or information in these articles results in anything near you breaking into bits, all the pieces are yours.

Topics

• Introduction
• Design Decisions in the Forth Kernel
  • The Essentials
  • Register Allocation
  • Win32Forth's NEXT, ENTER (DOCOL) and EXIT
• Demystifying DOES>
• Assemble or Metacompile?
• The W32F Primitives
• The W32F High-level Kernel

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