Digest #178 2022-04-04
Contributions
I don't understand why MAXUINT MAXUINT UM* would generate 1 1 eg for 0xFFFFFFFF 0xFFFFFFFF surely it should be 0x1 0xFFFFFFFE?
Replies
SEARCH-WORDLIST has other problems, too: 1) It returns an xt, but some systems have words with two xts (one for interpretation semantics and one for compilation semantics). 2) It has a stack effect with a variable number of result cells.
FIND-NAME-IN fixes these problems (as well as not having "-WORDLIST" in the name) and has been accepted for standardization.
However, there has been no proposal for making SEARCH-WORDLIST obsolescent. I have my doubts that the problems (including the naming inconsistency) will be considered reason enough for such a hypothetical proposal to be accepted, but I may be wrong (the benefit side of keeping it standardized is also slim IMO), so if you feel strongly about it, you could try making such a proposal. If such a proposal succeeds, SEARCH-WORDLIST will be marked as obsolescent in the next standard, and (unless some motion to keep it around) will be removed from the standard in the standard after that. Of course, many systems will still implement it for backwards compatibility.
In general, while consistent naming is an argument when a word is proposed for standardization, it is trumped by backwards compatibility and established practice. I don't remember anyone even proposing to rename an already standardized word; and of course therefore also no successful proposals.
I am closing this because it looks more like a pre-proposal to me than a request for clarification. If you want to pursue this further, please make a proposal.
Indeed. The test gives the result as 1 1 invert, and 1 invert is $f..fe.