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Reading Stack Comments

In many cases, you will find stack comments on the words that you write or use to be a big help. There are two different forms used by the developers of RetroForth.

The long form looks like ( a b c -- d ). In this case, a b c are taken off the stack and d is left after execution finishes. The rightmost item on each side of the -- is the TOS.

The short form is basically a condensed version of the long form. The above example would look like ( abc-d ). Each item in the short form is represented by a single character, with no spaces.

There is also an informal set of common symbols used in stack comments. These are shown below, and we recommend keeping to them if possible.

• xt or addr or a
  An address.
• x or y or z
  A value of any sort
• flag or f
  Generally a true or false value used with conditionals
• count or c or #
  A count or length of a string.
• rs:
  A prefix denoting a value on the return stack.