Portable Forth is a portable

Software portability

Portability in high-level computer programming is the usability of the same software in different environments. The prerequirement for portability is the generalized abstraction between the application logic and system interfaces...

 implementation of the Forth programming language written in ANSI C

ANSI C

ANSI C refers to the family of successive standards published by the American National Standards Institute for the C programming language. Software developers writing in C are encouraged to conform to the standards, as doing so aids portability between compilers.-History and outlook:The first...

. It differs from other distributions of Forth in that it strives for portability over performance

Computer performance

Computer performance is characterized by the amount of useful work accomplished by a computer system compared to the time and resources used.Depending on the context, good computer performance may involve one or more of the following:...

.

The pForth implementation of Forth is an open source programming language.

History

PForth started out as HFORTH, which was used in connection with the Hierarchical Music Specification Language, a music experimentation language developed by Phil Burk, Larry Polansky

Larry Polansky

Larry Polansky is a composer, guitarist, mandolinist, and a professor at Dartmouth College. He is a founding member and co-director of . He co-wrote HMSL with Phil Burk and David Rosenboom....

 and David Rosenboom

David Rosenboom

David Rosenboom is an American composer and a pioneer in the use of neurofeedback, cross-cultural collaborations and compositional algorithms...

. Phil Burk ported the HForth kernel to C

C (programming language)

C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....

 when he moved to the 3DO

3DO

3DO may refer to:*The 3DO Company, a video game company that developed:**3DO Interactive Multiplayer, a video game console, 1993–1996***List of 3DO games, a list of games released for the 3DO...

 company. The newly ported Forth at 3DO had to run on many different systems including SUN

Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...

, SGI

Silicon Graphics

Silicon Graphics, Inc. was a manufacturer of high-performance computing solutions, including computer hardware and software, founded in 1981 by Jim Clark...

, Macintosh

Macintosh

The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...

, PC

IBM PC compatible

IBM PC compatible computers are those generally similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT. Such computers used to be referred to as PC clones, or IBM clones since they almost exactly duplicated all the significant features of the PC architecture, facilitated by various manufacturers' ability to...

, Amiga

Amiga

The Amiga is a family of personal computers that was sold by Commodore in the 1980s and 1990s. The first model was launched in 1985 as a high-end home computer and became popular for its graphical, audio and multi-tasking abilities...

, the 3DO ARM

ARM architecture

ARM is a 32-bit reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by ARM Holdings. It was named the Advanced RISC Machine, and before that, the Acorn RISC Machine. The ARM architecture is the most widely used 32-bit ISA in numbers produced...

 based Opera system, and the 3DO PowerPC

PowerPC

PowerPC is a RISC architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM...

 based M2 system.

License

The pForth legal notice dedicates pForth to the public domain and allows for unlimited distribution, reproduction, and modification. The pertinent section reads as follows:

The pForth software code is dedicated to the public domain, and any third party may reproduce, distribute and modify the pForth software code or any derivative works thereof without any compensation or license. The pForth software code is provided on an "as is" basis without any warranty of any kind, including, without limitation, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose and their equivalents under the laws of any jurisdiction.

External links

• pForth Homepage
• pForth for Max OS X
• pForth for Debian
• pForth for MVS : MVS
  MVS
  Multiple Virtual Storage, more commonly called MVS, was the most commonly used operating system on the System/370 and System/390 IBM mainframe computers...
  
   on the IBM System/370 is an EBCDIC
  EBCDIC
  Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code is an 8-bit character encoding used mainly on IBM mainframe and IBM midrange computer operating systems....
  
  platform.