The problem with your example is that you can't change the delimiting character. If you wanted to do a word like .' you would have to define everything yourself. Adding $, overcomes this nicely. Btw, your example could be done more cleanly with [']: forth : dosomething, ['] type compile ['] cr compile ; macro : bla" m: s" dosomething, ; forth : test bla" blabla" ; -- Charles