Which are the fundamental stack manipulation operations?

Posted by Aadit M Shah on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by Aadit M Shah
Published on 2012-12-15T08:22:37Z Indexed on 2012/12/15 11:21 UTC
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I'm creating a stack oriented virtual machine, and so I started learning Forth for a general understanding about how it would work. Then I shortlisted the essential stack manipulation operations I would need to implement in my virtual machine:

drop ( a -- )
dup  ( a -- a a )
swap ( a b -- b a )
rot  ( a b c -- b c a )

I believe that the following four stack manipulation operations can be used to simulate any other stack manipulation operation. For example:

nip  ( a b -- b )       swap drop
-rot ( a b c -- c a b ) rot rot
tuck ( a b -- b a b )   dup -rot
over ( a b -- a b a )   swap tuck

That being said however I wanted to know whether I have listed all the fundamental stack manipulation operations necessary to manipulate the stack in any possible way.

Are there any more fundamental stack manipulation operations I would need to implement, without which my virtual machine wouldn't be Turing complete?

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