Forth Interpretation
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What is the difference between Interpreting & Compiling?
What is Interpretation?
Knuth (1997, pp. 200-201) discusses interpretive routines (more commonly known as “interpreters”), saying “an interpretive routine is a computer program that performs the instructions of another program, where the other program is written in some machine-like language…” Knuth goes on to say that “a machine-like language is able to represent a complicated sequence of decisions and actions in a compact, efficient manner…”
Knuth comments that a good machine designer should “also define the virtual machine whose language is to be interpreted…” (Knuth, 1997, p. 201)
Generally, interpretation is needed to execute code within a particular context
Forth contains a number of interpreters and new interpreters can be added as required. These are divided into an Outer Interpreter (Keyboard (or Text) Interpreter) which is Forth’s “Shell” (Brookshear, 2005, p. 115), and a number of Inner Interpreters
Using Tokens during Interpretation
Tokens rather than text strings can be used during compilation or interpretation. A token acts as a symbol equivalent to a text string