Webdesigner: Bruyneel D .
Webmaster: JP Jacobs

3 november 2004

NEWS - technology

A revolution

This is a virtual machine running a byte-code as the basic language.
More is that the FORTH language is used as this language.
Thus, something like a JAVA virtual machine but using FORTH unstruction and technics.
This language can compile & interpret sources and can be used like a scripting language.

But more is that the language is independent from the microprocessor and to run on a microprocessor needs just a virtual BYTE-FORTH machine running on this system. 
BYTE-FORTH compiled code can be sent from a computer to another having a different processor and this without the need to recompile the code.

Byte-Forth uses many segments and can load compiled modules.

Because the byte format, the compiled code is about twice thiner than a classic FORTH code.

The code runs not as fast as a direct chained FORTH but it runs about as fast as an indirect chained FORTH.

Its not a language as JAVA which can be seen as a high-level assembler, the compiler translating sources close of C++ to the JAVA virtual machine 'assembler'.

Like FORTH B-FORTH uses a stacks for datas, and the reverse notation for operations.
But it uses the same ideas of Managers used by Trakian for example. Thus 'properties' of an instance are contained in a Manager and many instances can exist. Running on Trakian the many instances run as tasks in a multitasking OS.
But all instances have the same basic code. They can have modules as extension of this basic code.

BYTE-FORTH can run as a single instance, in which case the Manager is simply the RAM area containing the 'properties' of this instance, the classic variables of a FORTH interpreter.

FORTH can have VOCABULARIES to extend the language, vocabularies targeted for applications. B-FORTH can do the same.
Any language can be developped in FORTH, from classic assembler to FORTH itself. And many other languages or compilers like C or C++ can also.

Noting that WAP is also a byte-code system, it can be imagined to develop a WAP system for Trakian.

Mundial Avenue
JP Jacobs

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