title: 2/ : shift or division?
description:
 The ANS Forth (a.k.a. ISO Forth) defines 2/ as an arithmetic shift right,
 but there are two unevident nuances.

 First of all, 2/ is not the same as 2 /

Jerry Avins <jya@ieee.o**> wrote in the message <3CF7A052.75658F4B@ieee.org>:
[..]
>  SwiftForth 2.2.2 09Mar2001
>  101 2 / .  50  ok
>  101 2/  .  50  ok
> -101 2 / . -50  ok
> -101 2/  . -51  ok
[..]

 Look once more at the last two lines. 2/ rounds towards minus infinity,
 while 2 / rounds towards zero.


 At second, the ANS Forth document fails to give the right definition
 of what an arithmetic shift right is:

> 6.1.0330   2/    "two-slash"   CORE
> ( x1 -- x2 )
> x2 is the result of shifting x1 one bit toward the least-significant
> bit, leaving the most-significant bit unchanged.

 This definition is ok for both tow's complement and one's complement
 machines but is wrong for signed magnitude machines.

Andrew Haley <aph@*****************>
wrote in the message <ada1bg$2uu$2@hammerfield.cambridge.redhat.com>:
>
[...]
> The only sane way to do an arithmetic right shift on a sign-magnitude
> machine is a shift that doesn't involve the sign bit.  The standard
> defintion of 2/ for such a machine is Just Plain Wrong.
>
> Andrew.

 Two more examples of number representations some bits of which
 must remain untouched are:

m_l_g3@yahoo.com (Michael L Gassanenko) wrote
in the message <b5ecdf44.0205310049.79efa6c3@posting.google.com>:
[...]
>
> 1) a system that represent integers as floating point numbers.
> I heard about at least one such system (IIRC pre-ANS).
>
> 2) a system that uses shadow bits for run-time type information.
> I use one such system as a cross-compiling host.

 The 3rd realistic example of a system that uses an unusual number
 representation is a Forth system implemented on a virtual machine
 that supports big numbers (each number is represented with as many
 bits as is needed), e.g. Forth on top of Scheme.