Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!gatech!hao!ames!ptsfa!ihnp4!chinet!dag
From: dag@chinet.UUCP (Daniel A. Glasser)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: C critisisms
Message-ID: <2060@chinet.UUCP>
Date: 4 Jan 88 21:00:29 GMT
References: <11075@brl-adm.ARPA> <7597@sunybcs.UUCP>
Reply-To: dag@chinet.UUCP (Daniel A. Glasser)
Organization: Chinet - Public Access Unix
Lines: 56

In article <7597@sunybcs.UUCP> ugfailau@joey.UUCP (Fai Lau) writes:
>In article <11075@brl-adm.ARPA> V4039%TEMPLEVM.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (Stan Horwitz) writes:
[much stuff deleted]
>>The question is, given the imagination of C's authors why couldn't they
>>think of a better name to call the language?  Where the heck did the
>>name come from?  Was the name C the result of a night of heavy drinking
>>or what?  Not that it really matters, but I am just curious?
>>
>>   Happy New Year ... Stan Horwitz  V4039 at TEMPLEVM
>
>	C stands for Compact, I think, referring to the nature of
>the language. Considering the UN*X philophy in naming system
>utilities, it is not surpprising that the name has been
>consisting of one alphabet. 99% of the Unix utilities are written
>in C, and it is correct that C was meant to substitute assembly
>language for system programmings.
>
>Fai  Lau
>SUNY at Buffalo (The Arctic Wonderland)
>UU: ..{rutgers,ames}!sunybcs!ugfailau
>BI: ugfailau@sunybcs INT: ugfailau@cs.buffalo.EDU

No, I believe that the name "C" actually comes from
the language BCPL, on which C's predicessor, B, is based.
Many attempts have been made by authors of C and UNIX texts
to come up with more romantic or meaningful meanings for these
names, but in fact, they are just puns or jokes.

BCPL and B are typeless, ie, only machine word types.  C is not
a sub-dialect of either of these languages.

Just to fill you in, and fill up the pnews line requirement but
not restart the "origin of the name UNIX" flamefest that occurs
every six months ahead of schendule, the name "UNIX" is a pun --
The authors had been working on the MULTICS project.  MULTICS is
the PL/I of operating systems, is huge and does everything in
the OS.  UN (as opposed to MULT) IX (instead of ICS).
[Some authors have attempted to change history here and have
asserted that the name unix was chosen as "a reference to the
unified, team programming environment it would serve." (1)]

I hope this clears some stuff up for both of you.

				Daniel A. Glasser

(1) Rebecca Thomas, PhD & Jean Yates, "A User Guide to the UNIX(TM) System"
	copyright 1982 by McGraw-Hill, ISBN 0-931988-71-3.  Excerpt
	reprinted within the copyright limits and does not violate
	any US or international copyright convention.  It is from Chapter 1
	(Page 6, end of first paragraph in my edition.)
-- 
					Daniel A. Glasser
					...!ihnp4!chinet!dag
					...!ihnp4!mwc!dag
					...!ihnp4!mwc!gorgon!dag
	One of those things that goes "BUMP!!! (ouch!)" in the night.