Byte_Addressing

This adds words allowing access to memory at a byte level.

Nga is cell addressed. There's no direct access to memory at a byte level. To access a specific byte one must fetch a cell, then extract the individual bytes by masking and shifting. Updating bytes is similarly annoying. The words here take care of these details.

It was originally developed for RETRO11 by Marc Simpson and has been updated for RETRO12 by Charles Childers.

Authors

• 2010, Marc Simpson
• 2011, 2018-2019, Charles Childers

Functions

+-------------------+--------+----------------------------+ | Function          | Stack  | Used For                   | +===================+========+============================+ | b:to-byte-address | a-a    | Return the byte address of | |                   |        | the first byte in a cell   | +-------------------+--------+----------------------------+ | b:unpack          | c-bbbb | Given a byte-packed cell   | |                   |        | on the stack, return the   | |                   |        | bytes it contains          | +-------------------+--------+----------------------------+ | b:pack            | bbbb-c | Pack four byes into a cell,| |                   |        | return the cell on the     | |                   |        | stack                      | +-------------------+--------+----------------------------+ | b:fetch           | a-b    | Fetch a byte               | +-------------------+--------+----------------------------+ | b:store           | ba-    | Store a byte into memory   | +-------------------+--------+----------------------------+

~~~{{   'Byte var     :byte-mask  (xn-b)     #255 swap #8 * dup     [ n:negate shift and ] dip shift ;     :replace     #0 [ [ [ [ drop @Byte ] dip ] dip ] dip ] case     #1 [ [ [ drop @Byte ] dip ] dip ] case     #2 [ [ drop @Byte ] dip ] case     #3 [ drop @Byte ] case     drop ;   ---reveal---     :b:to-byte-address (a-a) #4 * ;     :b:unpack (c-bbbb)     dup           #255 and swap     dup  #8 shift #255 and swap     dup #16 shift #255 and swap         #24 shift #255 and ;     :b:pack (bbbb-c)     #-24 shift   swap     #-16 shift + swap     #-8  shift + swap + ;     :b:fetch (a-b)     #4 /mod swap     #4 /mod     rot + fetch swap byte-mask ;     :b:store (ba-)     swap !Byte     #4 /mod swap [ dup fetch b:unpack ] dip     replace b:pack swap store ; }} ~~~

```&s:length #4 * #0 + b:fetch &s:length #4 * #1 + b:fetch &s:length #4 * #2 + b:fetch &s:length #4 * #3 + b:fetch ```