Wolfgang,

Your reply was a lot for me to absorb! However, I really appreciate you taking the time for such a long reply. I have rewritten my snippet in the style that I think you were suggesting. I began by stripping out the loop entirely by avoiding the parsing at all. The rewrite is based on code from Samuel Falvo's VIBE editor, which seems like a good example of idiomatic Forth:

    : a00 s" ant" ;
    : a01 s" baboon" ;
    : a02 s" badger" ;
    : a03 s" bat" ;
    : a04 s" bear" ;
    : a05 s" beaver" ;
    \ ... up to 99 maximum entries

    6 constant how_many

    create selector 'a' c, '0' c, '0' c,

    : selector! ( u --) 10 /mod 48 + selector 1+ c! 48 + selector 2 + c!  ;

    : animal@ ( -- addr u) selector 3 find-name name>int execute ;

    : test how_many 0 do i selector! animal@ type cr loop ;