Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!dcl-cs!nott-cs!james.cs.bham.ac.uk!igb
From: igb@cs.bham.ac.uk (Ian G Batten <BattenIG>)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: using (ugh!  yetch!) assembler
Message-ID: <363@james.cs.bham.ac.uk>
Date: 2 Aug 88 07:47:53 GMT
References: <6341@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <60859@sun.uucp> <474@m3.mfci.UUCP> <2442@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <2959@utastro.UUCP>
Organization: Computer Science Dept, Birmingham University, England
Lines: 21

In article <2959@utastro.UUCP> nather@utastro.UUCP (Ed Nather) writes:
> In article <2442@pt.cs.cmu.edu>, lindsay@k.gp.cs.cmu.edu (Donald Lindsay) writes:
> > This whole "debate" is silly. Didn't anyone ever hear of portability?
> > 
> 
> Gad, I forgot! Unix, the portable OS, was written in C with *no* assembly
> code -- have I got the story right?

I don't think you have --- the kernel was recoded in C but the early
stuff was in pdp7 assembler.  I have a feeling that the widespread use
of C in the kernel was to do with the port to the Interdata 8/32, but I
may be wrong.  Modern Unix kernels still have some assembler in them, I
think.  I dimly recall reading that the 4.2bsd on a VAX kernel had of
the order of 1000 lines of the stuff.

[Gosh, that was hedged with maybes!]
-- 
ian

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