title: IS
description:
  A synonym of TO . This word is widely used to assign to DEFERred
  words and sometimes to VALUEs and probably locals.

justification:

The reason behind the requirement that TO and IS are the same is
as follows:

1. Both words express the idea of assignment. It is possible
that children of DEFER and children of VALUE require different
methods of assignment. But this is implementation details.
The application programmer must be allowed to think in such
terms as "assignment" and "use". If we require the programmer
to remember each time whether he(she) meant "write to the jump
instruction destination" or "write to the mov instruction operand",
we burden his(her) human memory, a very limited resource.
So, even if children of DEFER and children of VALUE require
different methods of assignment, the right method must be chosed
by the computer rather than the human.

2. There is existing application code written for systems
where TO and IS are the same. It cannot be ported to
systems where TO and IS are different. But the code written
for systems where TO and IS are different can be ported
to systems where TO and IS are the same. Respecting existing
working code, we require that TO and IS are the same.

more-notes:

There are two more considerations:

3. the compiler complexity does not suffer: if TO and IS were
different, the compiler would have to report an error
in the case of using IS on a wrong word (rather than
silently generate code that crashes), so checking the type
of the word is necessary anyway.

4. The requirement that TO and IS are synonyms does not
prevent anybody from developing a style where choice between
TO and IS underlines some aspects that are considered important.

We are aware of at least three approaches to choosing
between the names TO and IS. They are:

1) use TO with values and IS with deferred words;

2) always use IS to avoid confusion between words like
>NUMBER and identically pronounced phrases like TO NUMBER
and 2 NUMBER ;

3) use IS for long-term assignments (including those that
are unlikely to be changed at all), use TO for short-term assignments.

portability-note:

There are systems on which TO and IS compile different code,
sometimes they silently compile incorrect code when are applied to
words of wrong type. Such systems use TO for VALUEs and IS for
DEFERred words.

If you need portability across the mentioned systems, and
cannot fix these systems, use TO only on VALUEs and IS only
on DEFERred words. But do not burden your mind with this silly
business, write some code for that!
Regrettably, you cannot write that code in ANS Forth because
ANS Forth does not let you examine the word's type.