Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!coplex!jim
From: jim@coplex.UUCP (Jim Sewell)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Correction
Message-ID: <272@coplex.UUCP>
Date: 8 Jan 88 00:31:21 GMT
References: <11075@brl-adm.ARPA> <145@snark.UUCP> <146@snark.UUCP>
Organization: Copper Electronics,  Louisville, Ky.
Lines: 22

> 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

I have not had any experience with the lower level AmigaDOS development, but I
have neither had, nor heard of anyone having, trouble writing common every day
type C code on the Amiga.  It is common knowledge in the Amiga circles that
AmigaDOS commands are all written in BCPL and I have heard in several reliable
places of it being based on TRIPOS.  I believe, but don't quote me 8-), that
the devolopers scratched the first attempt at an op-sys and used TRIPOS as a 
basis for the one they eventually released.  As a related note, there is a
project going on called the "AmigaDOS Replacement Project" which is an attempt
to replace the BCPL commands with C versions which will run faster, compile C
smaller, and interface better.  Please forgive my inability to remember by who
and where this work is being done.
==============================================================================
Jim Sewell					"Make knowledge free!"