Re: C history

["Björn Persson" <spam-away@nowhere.nil>]

Martin Krischik wrote:
> Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:
> 
> 
>>On Mon, 22 Aug 2005 19:32:01 -0500, Larry Elmore <ljelmore_@comcast.net>
>>declaimed the following in comp.lang.ada:
>>
>>
>>>I'm not sure that's necessarily the case.  After all, Unix predates K&R
>>>and K&R C was certainly not the first version of C.
>>>
>>
>>Pardon?
>>
>>As I recall, Kernighan and Ritchie /defined/ the original C
>>language... The original UNIX was Ritchie and Thompson (and some
>>others)...
> 
> 
> Well, K&R where programmers - so they likely first wrote the program (C
> compiler) and and then the book. If you go to Amazon now they will offer
> you the 2nd edition with ANSI-C.
> 
> So I guess that looking at he book won't tell you about the very first C.

The Development of the C Language, by Dennis M. Ritchie:

http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/chist.html

A few points from that article which are relevant to this thread:

� Ritchie turned B into C during 1971 to 1973.
� The book was written in 1978 and includes a lot that wasn't in the 
language in 1973.
� The primary requirement on B seems to have been that the compiler had 
to fit in 8 KiB of memory.

-- 
Bj�rn Persson                              PGP key A88682FD
                    omb jor ers @sv ge.
                    r o.b n.p son eri nu