AN INTRODUCTION TO THE BEETLE FORTH VIRTUAL PROCESSOR

Beetle is a virtual processor designed for the Forth language. It uses a modified, byte-stream code designed for efficient execution which i s binary portable between implementations. It has been implemented in C and assembler. The C implementation is completely machine-independen t with the exception of interactive input and output; the assembler ve rsion runs the supplied Forth compiler at up to half the speed of the corresponding native code compiler and generates more compact code. Be etle is designed to be embedded in other programs; a simple debugger h as been written to demonstrate this ability. Beetle can be configured to perform bounds checking on all memory references. A standard librar y is implemented; access to native code routines is also possible, all owing Forth and C programs to call each other.