[gforth] Calculating the size of colon-sys

[Marcos Cruz]

One subtle problem I had after migrating from Gforth 0.7.3 to 0.7.9 was
some pieces of code broke because they depended on the size of a
_colon-sys_. For, example:

----
: (apart-colon-sys) ( x1 x2 colon-sys -- x1 colon-sys x2 )
                    ( x1 colon-sys x2 -- colon-sys x2 x1 )
  [ /colon-sys 2 + ] literal roll ;

: apart-colon-sys ( a xt colon-sys -- colon-sys a xt )
  (apart-colon-sys) (apart-colon-sys) ;

: :init ( a -- )
  :noname apart-colon-sys (:init)  postpone [:init] ;
  \ Start a definition that will initialize entity _a_ to its default
  \ data.  The definition is finished by `;`.
  \
  \ XXX TODO -- Rewrite, simplify: don't depend on _colon-sys_.
----

Besides, the code assumes the control-flow stack is implemented using
the data stack. This assumption and moving the parameters around
_colon-sys_ were temporary solutions just to make the code work.

So far I had defined a `/colon-sys` constant, kind of naive.  When I
realized the problem was the size of a _colon-sys_ had changed 
in Gforth 0.7.9, I calculated it this way in my personal library:

----
depth value /colon-sys ( -- n )
  \ _n_ is the size of _colon-sys_ in cells.

:noname [ depth /colon-sys - 1- to /colon-sys ] ; drop
  \ Calculate `/colon-sys`.
----

It seems to work fine in all cases.

Anyway, I've searched the sources, but found no method to get the size
of _colon-sys_. Is there any way to get it, already provided by Gforth?

-- 
Marcos Cruz
http://programandala.net