Building a Forth Bytecode Compiler and Virtual Machine
By
healeycodes
Pulled from the oven just right. Trustworthy, fact-dense, deeply satisfying.
Summary
The author explores how Forth programming language works by building a bytecode compiler and virtual machine for a Forth-like language. The article explains Forth's stack-oriented architecture with both data and return stacks, demonstrates basic operations like pushing numbers and printing, and includes visualizations to help understand the language's mechanics. The content serves as an educational walkthrough of implementing a Forth interpreter from scratch.
Key quotes
· 4 pulledI was curious how Forth worked so I built a bytecode compiler and a VM for a Forth-like language, as well as some visualizations to show how it all works.
You don't need to know anything about Forth to follow along, aside from the fact it's a stack-oriented language.
The number (3) is pushed to the data stack, and then the dot (.) pops it from the data stack and prints it.
Forth has two built-in stacks. The data stack (sometimes just called 'the stack') and the return stack.
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