One of the things about Forth, is that the techniques have not proven to be amenable to generalization. Chuck Moore himself says[0]: > I wish I knew what to t

One of the things about Forth, is that the techniques have not proven to be amenable to generalization. Chuck Moore himself says[0]: > I wish I knew what to tell you that would lead you to write good Forth. I can demonstrate. I have demonstrated in the past, ad nauseam, applications where I can reduce the amount of code by 90% percent and in some cases 99%. It can be done, but in a case by case basis. The general principle still eludes me. --- I would have to start by asking, what is the essence of what has to happen to parse the string? How I would approach the problem depends a great deal on the specifics of the actual problem. So, your "concrete" example problem would have to be a lot more concrete before a Forth programmer could even start tackling it. That's the nature of a bottom-up method. [0] http://www.ultratechnology.com/moore4th.htm http://www.ultratechnology.com/moore4th.htm