retroforth/doc/book/general/syntax

# Syntax

RETRO has more syntax than a traditional Forth due to ideas
borrowed from ColorForth and some design decisions. This has
some useful traits, and helps to make the language more
consistent.

## Tokens

Input is divided into a series of whitespace delimited tokens.
Each of these is then processed individually. There are no
parsing words in RETRO.

Tokens may have a single character *prefix*, which RETRO will
use to decide how to process the token.

## Prefixes

Prefixes are single characters added to the start of a token
to guide the compiler. The use of these is a major way in
which RETRO differs from traditional Forth.

When a token is passed to `interpret`, RETRO first takes the
intitial character and looks to see if there is a word that
matches this. If so, it will pass the rest of the token to
that word to handle.

In a traditional Forth, the interpret process is something
like:

    get token
    is token in the dictionary?
      yes:
        is it immediate?
          yes: call the word.
          no:  are we interpreting?
               yes: call the word
               no:  compile a call to the word
      no:
        is it a number?
          yes: are we interpreting?
               yes: push the number to the stack
               no:  compile the number as a literal
          no:  report an error ("not found")

In RETRO, the interpret process is basically:

    get token
    does the first character match a `prefix:` word?
      yes: pass the token to the prefix handler
      no:  is token a word in the dictionary?
           yes: push the XT to the stack and call the
                class handler
           no:  report an error ("not found")

All of the actual logic for how to deal with tokens is moved
to the individual prefix handlers, and the logic for handling
words is moved to word class handlers.

This means that prefixes are used for a lot of things. Numbers?
Handled by a `#` prefix. Strings? Use the `'` prefix. Comments?
Use `(`. Making a new word? Use the `:` prefix.

The major prefixes are:

    | Prefix | Used For                      |
    | ------ | ----------------------------- |
    | @      | Fetch from variable           |
    | !      | Store into variable           |
    | &      | Pointer to named item         |
    | #      | Numbers                       |
    | $      | ASCII characters              |
    | '      | Strings                       |
    | (      | Comments                      |
    | :      | Define a word                 |

The individual prefixes will be covered in more detail in the
later chapters on working with different data types.

## Word Classes

Word classes are words which take a pointer and do something
with it. These are covered in detail in their own chapter,
but essentially they decide *how* to execute or compile specific
types of words.