From my mastodon feed:

@millihertz@oldbytes.space:

so i just saw this example given as a reason why

concatenative languages tend to be called "write-only":

f x y z = y² + x¬- |y|

: f

  drop dup dup *

  swap abs

  rot3 dup *

  swap - + ;

... snipped ...

He ends up writing the following:

lastly, nobody would ever write Forth like that anyway!

: Â¬â‰¤+  dup * swap dup * + ;

: y²+x²-|y|  ( y x -- result )

  tuck Â¬â‰¤+ swap abs - ;

Given a dislike of stack shufflers, a Retro implementation could be:

:f [ [ n:square ] bi@ + ] sip n:abs - ;

Assuming one knows the combinators, this is pretty straightforward,

but doesn't really resemble the original formula. I decided to write

a quick set of words to let me convert the original formula into

something more recognizable while still being RPN.

:f /xyz

   x: n:square y: n:square + y: n:abs - ;

This adds a / sigil that maps stack values to an internal set of

variables, whose values are returned by words with the variable names

followed by a colon.

The code follows.

~~~  'Vars d:create #256 allot       'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz s:keep   [ dup ':%c:_&Vars_$%c_+_fetch_; s:format s:evaluate ] s:for-each       :sigil:/     s:reverse [ 'liliadst i , &Vars , ] s:for-each ; immediate   ~~~

And the test case:

```  :f /xyz     x: n:square y: n:square + y: n:abs - ;       #33 #12 #301 f n:put   ```