On Aug 17, 6:38 pm, John Passaniti <john.passan...@gmail.com> wrote:
> You asked if Forth "borrowed" lists from Lisp. It did not. In Lisp, > lists are constructed with pair of pointers called a "cons cell". > That is the most primitive component that makes up a list. Forth has > no such thing; in Forth, the dictionary (which is traditionally, but > not necessarily a list) is a data structure that links to the previous > word with a pointer. Would you show me a picture, ascii art or whatever for Forth ? I know what lisp lists look like so I dont need that for comparison. Forth must have a convention and a standard or preferred practice for its dicts. However, let me tell you that in postscript the dictionaries can be nested inside other dictionaries and any such hiearchical structure is a nested associative list, which is what linked list, nested dictionaries, nested tables are. > This is in fact one of the nice things about > Lisp; because all lists are created out of the same primitive cons > cell, you can consistently process any list in the system. In Forth, > any lists (such as the dictionary, if it is a list) are specific to > their purpose and have to be treated individually. > > I don't know what you mean by "nested-dictionaries." There is no such > thing in Forth. Dictionaries don't nest. You can create wordlists, > but each wordlist is flat. When most people think of a nested > dictionary, they would think of a structure that would allow any > arbitrary level of nesting, not a string of flat wordlists. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
