Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!gatech!mcnc!decvax!decwrl!sun!amdcad!ames!necntc!linus!philabs!micomvax!ray
From: ray@micomvax.UUCP (Ray Dunn)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: The history of C (was Re: C critisisms)
Message-ID: <881@micomvax.UUCP>
Date: 13 Jan 88 21:20:17 GMT
References: <11075@brl-adm.ARPA> <145@snark.UUCP>
Reply-To: ray@micomvax.UUCP (Ray Dunn)
Organization: Philips Information Systems Ltd., St. Laurent - Que., Canada
Lines: 31

In article <145@snark.UUCP> eric@snark.UUCP (Eric S. Raymond) writes:

>In article <7597@sunybcs.UUCP>, ugfailau@joey.UUCP (Fai Lau) writes:
>>	C stands for Compact, I think, referring to the nature of
>
>Grrr...if you don't know the answer, don't bloody make one up!

Eric, don't you know by now,  Fai doesn't post UNLESS he doesn't know
what he's talking about!  (:-)!

>...
>called because it was a stripped-to-the-running-gears version of BCPL
>(aka British Common Programming Language), a typeless Algol-descended
      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>language developed for systems programming in the mid-60s in England.
>

I'm glad you confirmed my unsure feeling about this (someone talked about
"Basic .something. Programming Language").

BCPL was developed by a guy called Hendry, I believe, Scottish, first name
unremembered.

Please net, supply the credits here (Fai, only if you KNOW, not if you just
THINK, or HEARD THAT)!

I remember him giving a seminar to us in the then Dept of Machine
Intelligence & Perception in Edinburgh, in the very late sixties or very
early seventies.

Ray Dunn.  ..philabs!micomvax!ray