On Tue, 2004-02-03 at 04:00, Fred N. van Kempen wrote:
> > You can't simply cross compile the "as" from 2.11BSD because it's
> > written in assembler. (but it sure looks like it was C at point)
> No, UNIX as was always written in assembler, although they did use
> some tools to clean it up later on. Later (non-PDP11) versions were
> in C, obviously.
Sorry, wrong. Unix was first written in assembler, then re-written in
BCPL and re-written again in C. I know that by v6 (1975) it was mostly
C with assembly for some of the things that couldn't or wouldn't work
well in C.
I don't know exactly when the transition to C happened but I think that
by the time it escaped from Bell Labs (v5) it was C.
--
TTFN - Guy
Received on Tue Feb 03 2004 - 11:08:22 GMT