Forth programming language

Forth is a procedural, data-structured, reflective, programming language and programming environment. It was initially developed by Chuck Moore at the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in the early 1970s, formalized as a programming language in 1977, and standardized by ANSI in 1994. It features both interactive execution of commands (making it suitable as a shell for systems that lack a more formal operating system), as well as the ability to compile sequences of commands for later execution. Early Forth versions compiled threaded code, however many implementations today generate optimized machine code like other language compilers.

Related Topics:
Procedural - Data-structured - Reflective - Programming language - Programming environment - Chuck Moore - NRAO - 1970s - 1977 - ANSI - 1994 - Shell - Operating system - Threaded code - Optimized - Machine code

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Forth is so named because Moore considered it appropriate for fourth-generation computers (i.e. microcomputers), and the system on which he developed it was limited to five-letter filenames. Since the name is not an acronym, it is typically not spelled in all capital letters.

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