stoneknifeforth
sectorforth
stoneknifeforth | sectorforth | |
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13 | 10 | |
405 | 374 | |
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0.0 | 0.0 | |
almost 4 years ago | almost 2 years ago | |
Forth | Assembly | |
Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal | MIT License |
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stoneknifeforth
- Konilo: A personal computing system in Forth
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Writing a Compiler is Surprisingly Easy (part 1)
a problem that a lot of these series run into is that the author runs out of steam before they finish writing them. crenshaw's otherwise excellent series suffers from this, for example
so far the author of this one has only written the first chapter
i've written a few didactic compilers that are complete enough to compile themselves, though nothing else
https://github.com/kragen/stoneknifeforth (from a forth-like language to an i386 linux elf executable)
https://github.com/kragen/peg-bootstrap/blob/master/peg.md (from a peg language description with semantic actions to javascript)
http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/urscheme (from a subset of scheme to at&t-syntax i386 assembly)
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MilliForth
Look at how much room you have for data! I wonder what we can fit in there.
More seriously, a metacircular example to draw from would be: https://github.com/kragen/stoneknifeforth
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Lisp as the Maxwell’s Equations of Software
i wasn't able to get a runnable forth to less than a couple of pages written in itself https://github.com/kragen/stoneknifeforth but schönfinkel's ski-combinators are maybe the simplest practical basis
s f g x → f x (g x)
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Stop Writing Dead Programs (Transcript)
I've done all these things (except designing the hardware) and I agree that it can be very painful. I did some of them in 02008, for example: https://github.com/kragen/stoneknifeforth
The thing is, though, you can also not do all those things. You can use variables, and they don't even have to be allocated on a stack (unless you're writing a recursive function, which you usually aren't), and all the NIP TUCK ROT goes away, and with it all the Memory Championship tricks. You can test each definition interactively as you write it, and then the fact that the language is absurdly error-prone hardly matters. You can use metaprogramming so that your code is as DRY as a nun's pochola. You can use the interactivity of Forth to quickly validate your hypotheses about not just your code but also the hardware in a way you can't do with C. You can do it with GDB, but Forth is a lot faster than GDBscript, but that's not saying much because even Bash is a lot faster than GDBscript.
But Yossi was just using Forth as a programming language, like a C without local variables or type checking, not an embedded operating system. And, as I said, that's really not Forth's strength. Bash and Tcl aren't good programming languages, either. If you try to use Tcl as a substitute for C you will also be very sad. But the way they're used, that isn't that important.
I explained a more limited version of this 12 years ago: https://yosefk.com/blog/my-history-with-forth-stack-machines...
So, I don't think Forth is only useful when you have the freedom to change the problem, though programs in any language do become an awful lot easier when you have that freedom.
- StoneKnifeForth
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A complete compiler and VM in 150 lines of code
That's powerful enough to conveniently write, for example, a numerical root finding program for an arbitrary arithmetic expression.
But I think that within a complexity budget of 150 lines of code you can maybe be even more ambitious than that.
The example compiler in https://github.com/darius/parson/blob/master/eg_calc_compile... is a bit more stripped down than that, but in its 32 lines of code it compiles arithmetic assignment statements to a three-address RISC-like code (though using an unbounded number of registers). https://github.com/darius/parson/blob/master/eg_calc_to_rpn.... is a 16-line version that compiles the same language to a stack machine like your tutorial example.
In 66 lines of code in https://github.com/kragen/peg-bootstrap/blob/master/peg.md I wrote an example compiler which compiles a PEG grammar into a JavaScript parser for that grammar. Admittedly those 66 lines do not include an implementation of JavaScript to run the code on. It compiles the language it's written in.
In 132 lines of code in https://github.com/kragen/stoneknifeforth/blob/master/tinybo... I wrote an example compiler which compiles a crippled Forth dialect into i386 machine code, including an ELF header so you can run the result. It also compiles the language it's written in. It also doesn't include an i386 emulator to run it on.
In 83 lines of code in http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/neelcompiler.ml Neel Krishnaswami wrote a compiler from the untyped λ-calculus to a simple assembly language for a register machine. It also doesn't include an implementation of the assembly language.
In 18 lines of code in http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/meta5ix.m5, a simplification of META-II, I wrote a compiler from grammar descriptions to an assembly code for a parsing-oriented virtual machine. It compiles the language it's written in. A Python interpreter for the machine is in http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/meta5ixrun.py (109 lines of code) and a precompiled version of the compiler-compiler for bootstrapping is in http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/meta5ix.generated.m5asm.
A slightly incompatible variant of Meta5ix which instead compiles itself to C is in http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/meta5ix2c.m5 (133 lines of code, depending on how you count). (No C compiler is included.) The precompiled C output for bootstrapping is in http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/meta5ix2c.c.
Meta5ix is extremely weak and limited, really only enough for a compiler front-end; it can't, for example, do the kinds of RPN tricks we're talking about above.
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Looking for a simple forth compiler (producing asm/executables, not compiling forth words) to learn from, preferably in C family language
Title effectively says it all. The only thing I have found is StoneKnife Forth (implementation is in tinyboot1.tbf1) but this file is implemented in the same dialect of forth it implements, which due to being minimal makes it difficult to read and comprehend efficiently (I also can't find the origin of some words such as 'byte' used in the code but not implemented by the interpreter). I would prefer something in the C family to look at but anything should do as long as it's clean enough that I could use it as a reference to reimplement the compiler without much difficulty. Thank you in advance for any help with what is seemingly quite a narrow request.
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An HTTP server in a single .c file
I'm pretty sure Linux ELF has always allowed you to specify the initial load address. When I first wrote StoneKnifeForth https://github.com/kragen/stoneknifeforth its load address was 0x1000, but at some point Linux stopped allowing load addresses lower than 0x10000 by default (vm.mmap_min_addr). I originally wrote it in 02008, using the lower load address, and fixed it in 02017. It's still not using 0x804800 like normal executables but 0x20000. ASLR does not affect this.
Maybe you mean that before ELF support, Linux a.out executables had to be loaded at a fixed virtual address? That's possible—I started using Linux daily in 01995, at which point a.out was already only supported for backward compatibility.
- StoneKnifeForth (With a Metacircular Compiler)
sectorforth
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Cognition: The Revolutionary Antisyntax Language Redefining Metaprogramming
I think it's fine to show that you can do it, I think the main thing is to flip the order a bit.
E.g. "here's a cool thing thing we can do outcome of significantly changing a readable syntax>" to hook people, "here's how ", "and if you really want to know how to bootstrap this from basics ".
Maybe compare how e.g. Forth is often introduced, with how people describe bootstrapping of a simplistic Forth like Jonesforth or Sectorforth [2]. Showing people how they can define their own words and it fundamentally changes how they work with the language afterwards is cool to a lot of people who have no interest in details like how you an implement even numbers with a minimal set of primitives (e.g. Sectorforth relies on that).
Both are interesting to me, but I'm weird, and I think for most people it'd be easier to maintain their interest if those two aspects are either separate articles or at least if the bootstrapping is relegated to a standalone section they're clearly told they can skip.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31368212
[2] https://github.com/cesarblum/sectorforth
- Konilo: A personal computing system in Forth
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Fourteen Years of Go
> I'm not sure here how you differentiate minimalist from restrictive.
The flexibility of the language and its syntax. The more constructs are syntactic, the less minimalistic it is, and Go is a very syntactic language.
> I've always considered Go to be minimalist in terms of available tokens to the programmer: https://github.com/e3b0c442/keywords/blob/main/chart.png
No language on this chart has even a passing resemblance to minimalistic. I don't think anything does when it reaches double digit keywords.
For reference, I believe Smalltalk has 6.
And forth is more complicated because it doesn't really have keywords at all, and barely any syntax, instead it has assembly-coded / runtime-provided words (~functions) and variables. SectorForth (https://github.com/cesarblum/sectorforth/) is down to 8 builtin words, 2 IO words, and 5 variables (milliforth packs those behind a word instead). And so far 2 of the words have been found unnecessary / redundant.
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MilliForth
https://github.com/cesarblum/sectorforth/issues
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Interesting Article About a C compiler in 512 bytes That Uses Forth Inspired Tricks to Fit an Extremely Tight Space Constraint
Probably well known, but I'll let it here anyway: SectorForth
- Ask HN: What are some impressive software projects that fit in 512 bytes?
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That's pretty much it!
sectorforth
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A Forth bootable by old 386 PCs?
If you want to go allll the way down to the metal, you could put https://github.com/cesarblum/sectorforth in a floppy boot sector and then work your way up from there, enabling line A20 and switching into 32-bit protected mode yourself. Certainly on the "DIY" end of the spectrum, but it sure would be satisfying.
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suckless programming languages?
Forth - More powerful and minimal than C, can fit in 512 bytes
- BootOS operating system in 512 bytes
What are some alternatives?
jonesforth - Mirror of JONESFORTH
sectorlisp - Bootstrapping LISP in a Boot Sector
durexforth - Modern C64 Forth
porth - It's like Forth but in Python
factor - Factor programming language
book8088 - Examples from my book Programming Boot Sector Games
r4 - :r4 concatenative programming language with ideas from ColorForth.
colorForth - colorForth running in Bochs for Windows
r3d4 - r3 programing language for 64 bits Windows/Linux/Mac/Rasberry Pi 4
http - A simple multi-threaded HTTP/1.0-ish file server. Single file, ~250 LOC.
harm-less - Inspired by suckless and cat-v, this is a simple single document wiki of suckless practices and minimal software.