Saving and configuring the system

An essential facility for Forth is storing a configured Forth and restarting it in the same shape as when it was stored. This is called SAVE-SYSTEM in the usual systems. In many systems (such as iforth , gforth), this is too difficult and hampers usability of the Forth in question. So you want the following command's:

INCLUDE chess.frt S" chess" SAVE-SYSTEM

And then after typing "chess" just start playing chess.

It is of course useful not to have to reload a bunch of files, but there is more. Suppose you don't want to use the standard lab file, but instead

/home/albert/experiments/myforth.lab.

ciforth supplies command's for those needs.

"/home/albert/experiments/myforth.lab" BLOCK-FILE $! BLOCK-EXIT R/W BLOCK-INIT

I show those command's , not to explain them, but to make clear that one doesn't want to type them again and again. This kind of configuration data too is stored inside the saved system. The "burning into" an executable program of configuration data replaces the use of the registry in Windows and the so called environment variables in Linux. The nice thing is that is is system dependant. There is a hitch, virus detectors may hate it.