Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised Jul 13, 2026

PForth

pForth (Portable Forth) is a portable implementation of the Forth programming language written in ANSI C. It differs from the other distributions of Forth in that it strives for portability over performance.

Last revised
Jul 13, 2026
Read time
≈ 1 min
Length
235 w
Citations
3
Source
pForth
Original authorPhil Burk
DeveloperPhil Burk
Stable release
2.0.11 Edit this on Wikidata / 9 January 2023 (9 January 2023)
Written inC
Operating systemLinux, Mac OS, Microsoft Windows, WebTV, and embedded systems with no operating system
Size204 KB
Available inEnglish, French, Chinese
TypeProgramming tool
LicensePublic domain software
Websitewww.softsynth.com/pforth/
Repositorygithub.com/philburk/pforth

pForth (Portable Forth) is a portable implementation of the Forth programming language written in ANSI C. It differs from the other distributions of Forth in that it strives for portability over performance.

The pForth implementation of Forth is an open source programming language.

History

PForth started out as HForth, which was used in connection with the Hierarchical Music Specification Language, a music experimentation language developed by Phil Burk, Larry Polansky and David Rosenboom. Phil Burk ported the HForth kernel to C when he moved to the 3DO company. The newly ported Forth at 3DO had to run on many different systems including SUN, SGI, Macintosh, IBM PC compatibles, Amiga, and the 3DO ARM based Opera system.2

License

Originally pForth was released to the public domain with a custom release and disclaimer of no warranty but in 2020, it was relicensed under the zero-clause BSD license, which is a public-domain-equivalent license.3

References

References

External links