On Tuesday, March 14, 2023 at 9:25:50 AM UTC-7, Yaroslav Veremenko wrote:
> For example yesterday I installed SwiftForth, I read the documentation
> and it has few pages on source management. The only word that seem to matter
> to me in this case is INCLUDE. But it doesn't seem to go deep into how to actually use it.

In my novice package I have this:

only forth definitions \ start from a known configuration

marker novice.4th \ don't use TRY on this
\ this is provided primarily for Gforth that lacks EMPTY

: try ( -- ) \ stream: marker-name
bl word
dup find if execute else drop then \ execute the marker to get rid of the file's code
count included ; \ include the file (marker name must be file name)

\ The marker-name is required to be the same as the file-name.
\ TRY will then remove the file's code if it has already been compiled, then compile the file.
\ TRY can't be used on NOVICE.4TH because removing the file's code removes TRY
\ and TRY will then go haywire.

: require ( -- ) \ stream: marker-name
bl word
find if drop else count included then ;
\ include the file if it is not already there (marker name must be file name)

\ REQUIRE is used to make sure a needed file is compiled.

I've been using the novice package since 2010 and this works fine.
Occasionally I will crash SwiftForth and have to reload it,
and reload the floating-point support that for reasons unknown is
not automatically loaded, then reload NOVICE.4TH etc..

> SwiftForth doesn't seem to have ...
> a way to reset the state of a interpreter.

This is a bug in the ANS-Forth design. If your compilation or your program
aborts, the system doesn't restart in a known state. If you have word-lists
changed, BASE changed, etc., this doesn't get reset. The solution is to have
code at the beginning of your file that sets everything to a known state.
TRY is in the FORTH word-list so it should be available, then your initialization
code fixes any other lingering problems.