[TUHS] forth on early unix

[Warner Losh via TUHS]

On Mon, Sep 22, 2025, 2:55 PM Stuff Received via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:

> On 2025-09-22 09:34, Phillip Harbison via TUHS wrote:
> > Dave Horsfall via TUHS wrote:
> >> Larry McVoy via TUHS wrote:
> >> > I'm still not a forth fan.  That said, the sun boot proms were in
> forth
> >> > and there was some pretty cool forth in there.  It knew the VM
> >> > structures, it knew sockets, it knew a lot.  I'm still not a forth fan
> >> > but it was useful.
> >>
> >> The FreeBSD boot scripts are written in FORTH (for the early stages at
> >> least).
> >>
> >> Cute language, but then again I was also brought up on APL\360 :-)
> >
> > Wasn't Open Firmware based on Forth? I recall running into it when
> > working with MkLinux.
>
> https://github.com/openbios/openboot (and other tidbits in the same repo)
>

Yea. The FreeBSD loader started out trying to replicate these interfaces
but fell well short of that goal and then diverged...

Warner

>