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In Thinking Forth (also here), Leo Brodie writes:
LaFarr Stuart...didn't like the input buffer, so he implemented Forth without it, and discovered that he didn't really need an input buffer.
How is the Forth input buffer used, and how did Stuart's alternative implementation without it work?
Typically, a Forth interpreter will read an entire line of text into a buffer called "the input buffer" and will then scan that buffer, breaking it down into words which it either executes or compiles. Because Forth machines are often quite low level and lack fully dynamically allocated memory, it's hard for an implementation to read a line of arbitrary length so the input buffer is usually a fixed size and that represents the maximum line length (ignoring such modernisms as UTF-8 for now).
It seems that LaForth, instead of waiting for a new-line, merely waits for a space and so executes/compiles each word as it is typed in and does not wait for the end of the line. There's still a buffer, but it is quite a small buffer. Word size is constrained but line length is not.¹
It seems like a nice approach and probably leads to a simplified parser. but there are some issues. Ansi Forth more or less assumes that the input buffer exists and so includes words that can be used to manipulate it in various ways. I don't see how these words (which are considered standard) could be implemented in LaForth.
¹ This is described in section 1.3.1 of the LaForth book.
It depends on your interpretation of input buffer.
The answer is in section 1.3.1 of LaForth. There is an input buffer but not as most systems would interpret the meaning of the term. It only gathers one word and then interprets it immediately. It does not wait for the user to type in an entire line into a buffer before starting the interpretation process.
The question is whether the buffer used to gather the word is an input buffer. I would say it is - the terminator is a space. Some would argue that it isn't an input buffer because there is no line terminator (CR/LF). The main difference is the ability to edit the buffer. If it is interpreted immediately, the user has no chance of editing. If it waits until a CR/LF is input, the user can still edit the buffer.
