Origins of C (was: "Nobody programs in machine language" (was:Modern

From: Huw Davies <huw.davies_at_kerberos.davies.net.au>
Date: Thu Jun 24 08:40:16 2004

On 24 Jun 2004, at 16:24, Andy Holt wrote:

> A subset of this (BCPL) was designed and used as an implementation
> language
> for CPL.
> It became a (reasonably) widely implemented and used language on
> British
> computers of the era (because it was easy to port). So not "rarely
> implemented". Its real failing was an assumption of word (rather than
> character) addressing.

At the time BCPL was implemented this wasn't such a bad assumption. I'm
fairly
sure that most computers at the time in the UK were word rather than
byte
addressed. I did all (well really most) of my BCPL programming on a
DECsystem-10 where bytes had a completely different interpretation
to the commonly accepted IBMism.

Huw Davies | e-mail: Huw.Davies_at_kerberos.davies.net.au
Melbourne | "If soccer was meant to be played in the
Australia | air, the sky would be painted green"
Received on Thu Jun 24 2004 - 08:40:16 BST