gforth, gforth-fast, gforthmi - a fast and portable Forth system
Contents
Description
GForth is a fast and portable implementation of the Forth programming language. For details read the
manual.
Environment Variables
GFORTHPATH contains the search path for source and image files.
GFORTHD gives the gforth executable used by gforthmi for creating the base images. It should be a double
indirect threaded system. Default: gforth-ditc.
GFORTH gives the gforth executable used by gforthmi for computing the relocatable image from the base
images. Default: gforth.
GFORTHHIST gives the location of the history file used by gforth to allow command-line recall. Default:
$HOME. (The history file is named .gforth-history).
Examples
gforth
starts the system and goes into interactive mode.
gforth file1 file2 -e bye
loads and interprets the files file1 and file2, then exits.
gforth-fast
is the same as gforth, except that it does not support accurate backtraces for signals, and is faster by
up to a factor of 2. Use it for debugged, performance-critical programs such as benchmarks.
gforthmi asm.fi -m 1M asm.fs
creates an image asm.fi that has a default dictionary size of 1MB and has the file asm.fs loaded.
Files
.../gforth.fi default Forth image
*.fi Forth loadable image
*.fs Forth source (sequential)
*.fb Forth source (block)
*.fd generated with makedoc.fs
*.i C include files
*.ds documentation source
*TAGS etags files
Name
gforth, gforth-fast, gforthmi - a fast and portable Forth system
Options
--help-h Lists the available options, including some not described here (see also the manual).
--image-filefile-ifile
Loads the Forth image file instead of the default gforth.fi.
--pathpath-ppath
Uses path for searching the image file and Forth source code files instead of the default in the
environment variable GFORTHPATH or the path specified at installation time (typically
/usr/local/lib/gforth:.. A path is given as a :-separated list.
--dictionary-sizesize-msize
Allocate size space for the Forth dictionary space instead of using the default specified in the
image (typically 256K). The size specification consists of an integer and a unit (e.g., 4M). The
unit can be one of b (bytes), e (element size, in this case Cells), k (kilobytes), and M
(Megabytes). If no unit is specified, e is used.
--data-stack-sizesize-dsize
Allocate size space for the data stack instead of using the default specified in the image
(typically 16K).
--return-stack-sizesize-rsize
Allocate size space for the return stack instead of using the default specified in the image
(typically 16K).
--fp-stack-sizesize-fsize
Allocate size space for the floating point stack instead of using the default specified in the
image (typically 16K). In this case the unit specifier e refers to floating point numbers.
--locals-stack-sizesize-lsize
Allocate size space for the locals stack instead of using the default specified in the image
(typically 16K).
--evaluateforth-eforth
Evaluates the forth code. This option takes only one argument; if you want to evaluate more Forth
words, you have to quote them or use several -es. To exit after processing the command line
(instead of entering interactive mode) append -e bye to the command line. This is an image-
specific option of the default image.
See Also
The Gforth manual - available in hypertext (Info, HTML) and printable (TeX, PS, ASCII) forms.
The ANSI document X3.215-1994 (i.e., the ANS Forth standard).
More information on Gforth (e.g., pointers to new versions, to the manual on the WWW and to papers about
Gforth) is available through http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/projects/forth.html.
Synopsis
gforth [initialization options] [image-specific options] gforth-fast [initialization options] [image-
specific options]
gforthmi filename [initialization options] [image-specific options]
