FORTH is a program that interfaces keyboards with computer. It provides all the software necessary to time-share users and manage core and disk memory. Its key is a dictionary that divides memory into entries that identify character strings, code and data. The resulting language is sufficiently powerful to describe FORTH itself, and sufficiently flexible to make inquiries with. It may be readily extended to handle as many, and as complex, applications as hardware permits. On the B-5500 FORTH uses 2K of core and can express a complex application in each of the 30 1K regions of core that remain.
Next Chapter
Return to the Table of Contents