Re: [gforth] Gforth's fsl-util.*

[Anton Ertl]

On Sun, Nov 25, 2012 at 01:01:31PM +0100, David Kuehling wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I've recently come to using the FSL (Forth scientific library)
> matrix/array support that ships with Gforth as fsl-util.4th.
> 
> A few comments/questions about that:
> 
>  * Gforth CVS contains two files, fsl-util.4th and fsl-util.fs where
>    fsl-util.fs seems to be the more recent version, however only only
>    fs-util.4th is installed.  Is that by mistake?

I added fsl-util.4th in 2004 after a request by Krishna Myneni (and
apparently the file did come from him).

Bernd added fsl-util.fs in 2008.

I don't think either of us does anything with FSL, so, since you are
interested, how about you adopting it, and doing what you think is
best.

>  * Both files suffer from printing out text to stdout during loading,
>    even with WARNINGS OFF, which makes them somewhat unusable from
>    scripts that need well-defined (machine-readable) output.  (Though
>    there's a workaround [1])

Yes, that's not Gforth style.  Just comment this stuff out (not just
when warnings are turned off).

>  * The Vector/Matrix indexing operators '}' and '}}' have quite some
>    overhead when implemented in Forth.  What about adding them as
>    primitives?  (I volunteer for the job unless there're objections).

I prefer not to add new primitives for stuff that can be coded in
Forth.  If you want, add superinstructions for the primitive sequences
in these words.

- anton