Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!teknowledge-vaxc!sri-unix!quintus!ok
From: ok@quintus.uucp (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Basics of Program Design
Message-ID: <182@quintus.UUCP>
Date: 21 Jul 88 03:05:38 GMT
References: <901@td2cad.intel.com> <3061@rpp386.UUCP> <395@proxftl.UUCP> <53374@ti-csl.CSNET> <464@proxftl.UUCP> <Jul.10.00.30.47.1988.21186@aramis.rutgers.edu> <505@proxftl.UUCP>
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In article <505@proxftl.UUCP> bill@proxftl.UUCP (T. William Wells) writes:
>A minor grouse: why complain about the IBM-PC and its supposed
>limiting effect?  Especially since a good part of the design of C
>caters to the characteristics of the PDP-11, a machine with
>characteristics similar to the IBM-PC but much more restrictive.

No part of the design of C caters to the PDP-11.
C is BCPL
  +  plus Pascal-like types
  +  plus auto-increment pointer operations (*p++, *++p, *--p, *p--)
The *only* thing in C which would justify the "PDP-11" claim is
the autoincrement pointer operations, but note that (a) the PDP-11
directly supports only two of those operations, and not on all types,
and (b) history is against you:  C's designers claim that they put this
feature in *before* they got a PDP-11.