title: >CELLS
description:
 >CELLS              "to-cells"
 ( n1 -- n2 )

 Convert n1, the number of bytes, to n2, the corresponding number
 of cells. If n1 does not correspond to a whole number of cells, the
 rounding direction is system-defined.

notes:
 This word is functionally equivalent to the phrase 1 CELLS /

 Sometimes this word is called CELL/ . We prefer the name >CELLS for
 the same reason why ALLOT is preferred to DP+! : the name must reflect
 the purpose of the definition rather than how it works.

 This word is needed much more rarely than CELLS. One of the possible
 cases where it is needed is like following: there is some time-critical
 code, we have an array of pointers and want to identify its elements
 by their offsets raher than their numbers. This works fine, but sometimes
 we do need element numbers. And the phrase 1 CELLS / is at first ugly
 and at second slow because it requires division.

implementation:

 One of the possible implementations is:

~~~tag[pre]tag~~~
1 CELLS DUP 1- AND                          [IF]~~~
                                            ~~~
: >CELLS                                    ~~~
    [ 1 CELLS ] LITERAL /                   ~~~
;                                             ~~~
                                            [ELSE]~~~
: >CELLS                                                ~~~
    [ 1 CELLS                                             ~~~
    ] 2/ [ 2/ DUP 1 > [IF] 0 >IN ! [THEN]   \ do not reformat! ~~~
    DROP ]                                                   ~~~
;                                                            ~~~
                                            [THEN]               ~~~
~~~tag[/pre]tag~~~
Please, note that the phrase [IF] 0 >IN ! [THEN] implements
a loop.

page-written-by:
 mlg