Pipes in Forth

Abstract

The ‘>ipes” mechanism in UNIXM is a coroutine inte~ace between program modules operating on streams of data. Just as ordinary Forth words form an applicative language that operates on integers on the stack, modules interconnected bypipes form an applicative language operating on data elements ranging up to large files, depending on the function. A pipe mechanism is readily implemented with a multitasking Forth. This paper presents a simple demonstration wordset, and discusses design issues involved in building a practical utility package based on pipes.