Threaded Interpretive Languages: Their Design and Implementation

The simplicity of a stack-based forth-like language makes it the easiest roll-your-own language possible. Its best to write a TIL in assembler, but there are examples available on the net that are written in C.

I bought this book in high school, and read it many times cover to cover (highlighted, pages turned down, etc). Being able to create my own languages on my TRS-80 was an eye-opening experience. This book will show you how simple the core of a threaded interpreted language could be, while still having the power to do anything you want it to do. This book should be on your shelf alongside the dragon book:Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools (2nd Edition). Today, Threaded Interpretive Languages is probably the more relevant book.

I love this book. I got turned on to FORTH while writing code for an engineering company in my industrial training year, and the simplicity of the language stuck. Enter Loeliger's book, at the time the most expensive book I had ever bought, and I was hooked.It's hard to describe the almost visceral fascination I had with this book, but I recall a hot summer (probably 1986 if I do the sums) when I bought an Atari ST specifically to build my own TIL in 68K assembler. It wasn't much use, it wasn't a complete port of Loeliger's Z80 code, but it kept me amused (and I later wrote one in C for a real job). I still take the book down now and then and leaf through it, but the details are gone and I can only smile with nostalgic puzzlement at the cryptic pencilled notes in the margins (p98: 'WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?!', which I seem to recall was a comment on dubious coding style).Probably not much use in practical terms now, but it's a refreshing reminder of how simple home computing used to be.