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From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: ????Generic C????
Message-ID: <8216@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 27-Jun-87 23:17:39 EDT
Article-I.D.: utzoo.8216
Posted: Sat Jun 27 23:17:39 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 27-Jun-87 23:17:39 EDT
References: <8015@brl-adm.ARPA>, <777@Pescadero.ARPA>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 21

> >              What is Generic C??  Is it K&R?  Is it H&S?  Is it the
> >         currently PROPOSED Ansi Standard DRAFT??  Is the the original
> >         C that was written for the PDP 11/10??
>
> PDP-8, at least, maybe even earlier.  Ask Dennis.

No, not PDP-8.  Unix first ran on the PDP-7, but I don't believe there was
ever a C implementation for it.  There was an interpreter for B, C's direct
ancestor.  The next stage was the PDP-11/20, the first 11, but the system
was still in assembler; B existed and got some use.  According to the BSTJ
paper, C came about because B's degenerate type structure was poorly suited
to the 11 and especially poorly suited to floating-point on the 11.  That
sounds to me like C evolved when the 11/45 was at least on the horizon,
because the 11/20 had no floating point.  (There was floating-point software
for it, but that used 6-byte numbers and the BSTJ paper alludes to the 4-byte
and 8-byte types which were introduced with the 11/45.)  I think it's fair
to say that the 11/45 was the major target of the original C, although it
may have run on the 11/20 as a temporary measure.
-- 
Mars must wait -- we have un-         Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
finished business on the Moon.     {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry