Forth programming language?

Development Libraries
1

I have a nostalgic attachment to the Forth programming language that I learned last century and never used.
I understand Forth is used in embedded systems (lego mindstorms is the only one that comes to mind right now) so I thought i would find an implementation for the most popular microcontroller development system in the world, i.e. Arduino.
Yet i could not find anything mature enough to be of simple installation and practical to use.

Anyone knows of a good Forth implementation for Arduino?

TIA

2

Has been discussed in the forum, do some browsing & see how far it went.

3

CrossRoads:
Has been discussed in the forum, do some browsing & see how far it went.

Thank you for your useful answer.
Here's the link to the post you are referring to.
http://arduino.cc/forum/index.php/topic,8838.0.html

I read the whole post before opening a new thread. The post is from 1/2011 and, guess what, is closed!
And, as I said "Yet i could not find anything mature enough to be of simple installation and practical to use."

So my question still stands: Anyone knows of a good Forth implementation for Arduino?

Any useful answer would be greatly appreciated.

4

So my question still stands: Anyone knows of a good Forth implementation for Arduino?

Any useful answer would be greatly appreciated.

So, you've googled and found nothing. Doesn't that tell you something?

5

PaulS:

So my question still stands: Anyone knows of a good Forth implementation for Arduino?

Any useful answer would be greatly appreciated.

So, you've googled and found nothing. Doesn't that tell you something?

Yes, it does. I guess i am afraid to face the sad reality.
Call it denial if you wish but i was hoping that someone in this forum (which i find, for the most part, very useful) could give me hope. =(

Oh well, i guess i'll ask this question again in 2 years.....

6

While you're waiting, give the Bitlash interpreter a try. If you know Forth it should be a piece of cake to learn.

You'll have to live with infix notation, but you get the same immediacy you get from the Forth command line.

-br

7

http://amforth.sourceforge.net/ - Not specifically Arduino, but it is designed for ATMegas.

8

Yes, I have a fondness for Forth, too. The limited resources on early Arduinos, read limited RAM, since thats where a 'real' Forth wants to live, made it a very limited system, unless one went for a blended system where development occurs on your computer, compiled and uploaded to the Arduino, which is more complicated.

However, with the newer Arduinos with more powerful mpus, this should be much easier now, and a more traditional standalone Forth with adequate resources sounds eminently possible.

David Harris
OpenLCB Dev Team

9

I can recommend amforth:
http://amforth.sourceforge.net/

and FlashForth:
http://flashforth.sourceforge.net/

Both run atmegas, FF runs pic18/24/33 as well.

Pito

10

The last time I tried to put amforth on an arduino, it was a pretty painful experience. But amforth has had active development since then, and with optiboot there is at least the potential to preserve the arduino bootloader AND put the code amforth needs to save new words to flash, up in the boot section. So it might be worth another look...

11

westfw:
So it might be worth another look...

You have my vote :slight_smile:

And also, during the (rather fruitless) research I've done prior to opening this topic, I came across pForth, which is an open source implementation aimed at portability. It has been ported to a ton of other systems, but surprisingly not to Arduino.
I wonder if for someone (like you) who has the right set of skills, this could be an easier/ more practical way to go:
http://www.softsynth.com/pforth/

Just a thought....

12

I've been working on a Forth environment for the Arduino, and just a posted a call for help here http://arduino.cc/forum/index.php/topic,140050.0.html. I still need to find a place to post the code that. Any suggestions?