gforth - GNU Forth for Android

Bernd Paysan

About this app

Gforth is the GNU's project implementation of the programming language Forth. This APK is the binary distribution for the Android platform, for ARM and x86-processors. You can find more information and links to source code on http://bernd-paysan.de/gforth.html, and more information about Android-specific features on http://www.forth-ev.de/wiki/doku.php/en:projects:gforth-android:start.

For optimum experience when programming, use a soft keyboard made for that task, like Hacker's Keyboard.

Gforth is available under GPLv3.

Gforth uses GCC to compile a fast direct or indirect threaded Forth; Gforth is fully ANS-Forth and Forth-2012 compliant. Authors of Gforth are Anton Ertl, Bernd Paysan, Jens Wilke, Neal Crook, David Kühling and others.

The goal of the Gforth Project is to develop a standard model for ANSI Forth. This can be split into several subgoals:

* Gforth should conform to the ANSI/200x Forth standard.
* It should be a model, i.e. it should define all the implementation-dependent things.
* It should become standard, i.e. widely accepted and used. This goal is the most difficult one.

To achieve these goals Gforth should be

* Similar to previous models (fig-Forth, F83)
* Powerful. It should provide for all the things that are considered necessary today and even some that are not yet considered necessary.
* Efficient. It should not get the reputation of being exceptionally slow.
* Free.
* Available on many machines/easy to port.

The Gforth apk installs three icons: One is the fast engine (Gforth fast), one the debug engine (Gforth ITC), where the single step debugger works, and the backtrace is precise even on exceptions, and the third one is the net2o protocol demo app, with the "Nettie" octopus. It's a demo now, so don't expect it to work flawless.

Ratings and reviews

Nice implementation. However, it seems that all output is buffered and nothing will be displayed until execution is finished. Have attempted to flush the output during execution and nothing works. When the main word finally returns, all of the output is immediately displayed. So, everything is stored until execution is finished and then everything (up to thousands of lines) gets displayed as one huge chunk.

Great to have gforth on my pixel but does ask for odd permissions, music & audio, and photos & videos ... Won't start without them ... Anybody know why or is it a packaging error ?

It works. (1) Would be nice to be able to change font size (2) I can't paste anything into the editor using long press... Also, consider adding options like "Use volume down key for CTRL"; that way, we wouldn't have to install outdated keyboards like Hackers Keyboard, which doesn't work well on all systems.

What's new

Better bugfixes for exception problem