Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!cornell!rochester!udel!burdvax!bpa!cbmvax!snark!eric
From: eric@snark.UUCP (Eric S. Raymond)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Correction
Message-ID: <146@snark.UUCP>
Date: 5 Jan 88 23:08:05 GMT
References: <11075@brl-adm.ARPA> <145@snark.UUCP>
Organization: Thyrsus Enterprises, Malvern PA 19355
Lines: 24

In <145@snark.UUCP> I wrote:
>The name 'C' was assigned because the original DMR compiler on the PDP-11 was
>written as the successor to an interpreted language called 'B' that Ritchie
>had been hacking with on the original PDP-7 proto-Unix.

Arnold Robbins points out that my phrasing is misleading, implying that DMR
wrote B. My apologies to anyone confused; Ken Thompson designed and wrote B.

Also, I expanded 'BCPL' to 'British Common Programming Language'. Mr. Robbins
thinks the correct name is '*Basic* Common Programming Language' and may well
be right -- I once knew the exact name, when I was doing the research for
the history section in _Portable_C_And_Unix_Systems_Programming_, but may have
misremembered it.

BTW, I am given to understand that BCPL is still sort of alive on one machine
with a fairly large user base, the Commodore Amiga. A friend who develops for
Amigas claims that parts of the AmigaDOS lower levels were lifted from TRIPOS,
an OS developed at Cambridge University in BCPL. He says that this has still-
visible consequences in the C interfacing. Can anyone else verify this?

-- 
      Eric S. Raymond
      UUCP:  {{seismo,ihnp4,rutgers}!cbmvax,sdcrdcf!burdvax,vu-vlsi}!snark!eric
      Post:  22 South Warren Avenue, Malvern, PA 19355    Phone: (215)-296-5718