Node:Control Structures, Next:Defining Words, Previous:Memory, Up:Words

Control Structures

Control structures in Forth cannot be used interpretively, only in a colon definition¹. We do not like this limitation, but have not seen a satisfying way around it yet, although many schemes have been proposed.

• Selection: IF ... ELSE ... ENDIF
• Simple Loops: BEGIN ...
• Counted Loops: DO
• Arbitrary control structures:
• Calls and returns:
• Exception Handling:

Footnotes

1. To be precise, they have no interpretation semantics (see Interpretation and Compilation Semantics).