4th on Micro-controllers?

[M Edward Borasky]

Has anyone gotten 4th to run on a micro-controller? I'm especially interested in the Raspberry Pi Pico and Pico 2, but larger ones will also work.

[The Beez]

Hi!

4tH has run on a multitude of hardware, but always with an underlying OS. I've heard micro-controllers are quite capable nowadays, but personally - I have zero experience with them.

If you want to have a go - I think it's pretty interesting. Of course, if you need any help, I'm always available.

Hans Bezemer

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

I'm experimenting with the Zephyr real-time operating system. It has a
POSIX style user interface and works on a number of micro-controllers
and single-board computers. Once I get past the "make the LEDs blink
and print 'Hello world'" stage I can try to build 4th.

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[The Beez]

Hi znweb!

Well, that sounds great! I'd be interested to hear from you in more detail when you succeed - because micro processors haven't been a realm I ventured upon! And I think it's fascinating..!

Keep me posted!

Hans Bezemer

[The Beez]

Hi!

I did a quick dive into the Arduino scene - and most of your "problems" seem associated with input/output. Of course, a micro controller hasn't got a screen or keyboard. It communicates with serial.So, this is what I've come up with to get you started:

1. Only port the library and 4th.c (to begin with. Later - maybe 4tsh.c is fun). Note you need to port the editor sources as well. I dunno whether an Arduino is 16bit, 32bit or 64bit. My guess is 32bit. Note you can use the generated editor.h (or mon.h) from any 32bit platform;

2. 4th.c does most of the stdin/stdout I/O. I/O related members are comp_4th.c (loading 4tH files), dump_4th.c (debugging messages), exec_4th.c (execution I/O), load_4th.c (loading HX files), save_4th.c (saving HX files) and cgen_4th.c (saving C sources). I think for an Arduino port you could drop the three last ones without losing too much functionality;

3. dump_4th.c: vfprintf()

comp_4th.c: fopen(), fseek(), ftell(), fread(), fclose()

exec_4th.c: fseek(), ftell(), fflush(), fputc(), fgetc(), ungetc() (you can forget that last one if you don't wanna read old Apple text files);

4th.c: fgets(), fopen(), fclose(), fflush(), vfprintf()

4. This might be of interest: https://playground.arduino.cc/Main/Printf/

And this one: https://www.appelsiini.net/2011/simple-usart-with-avr-libc/

5. The library in question can be found here: https://github.com/avrdudes/avr-libc/tree/main/libc/stdio

Hope this helps!

Hans Bezemer

On Wednesday, April 30, 2025 at 3:07:57 PM UTC+2 zn...@znmeb.net wrote: