Hacker News Reader

HN often submits articles about Forth and derivatives. Are concatenative and stack-based languages kind of the same thing? (for example, Wikipedia classifies both "Forth" and "Factor" as "concatenative (stack-based)" programming languages.

View on HN

Yes - Concatenation Languages and stack-based languages refer to the same paradigm and group of languages. Forth is the original and oldest. I've looked at Factor and it's a really impressive piece of work. Well worth studying.

I don’t think this is accurate. While most popular concatenative languages are stack-based, that is not a requirement for the paradigm. The Wikipedia article calls out a few alternatives, such as Om.

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concatenative_programming_la...

APL-family languages are somewhat concatenative but not stack-based. They use grouping rules to form chains of composed functions.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com