From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.0 required=5.0 tests=MAILING_LIST_MULTI, T_SCC_BODY_TEXT_LINE autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 2246 invoked from network); 7 Jun 2023 10:14:40 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (50.116.15.146) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 7 Jun 2023 10:14:40 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [IPv6:::1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 95E7D42532; Wed, 7 Jun 2023 20:14:34 +1000 (AEST) Received: from smtp2-g21.free.fr (smtp2-g21.free.fr [212.27.42.2]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 6A68B4252D for ; Wed, 7 Jun 2023 20:14:17 +1000 (AEST) Received: from [10.0.2.42] (unknown [109.190.99.1]) (Authenticated sender: sebastien.lorquet@free.fr) by smtp2-g21.free.fr (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id AB42B2005A6 for ; Wed, 7 Jun 2023 12:14:15 +0200 (CEST) Message-ID: <1e651370-3ada-e211-c277-409d6563500d@f4grx.net> Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2023 12:14:14 +0200 MIME-Version: 1.0 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:102.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/102.11.0 Content-Language: fr To: tuhs@tuhs.org From: Sebastien F4GRX Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID-Hash: RBG5P56ZVUNSFOUKNVDIDGXOEBCME6G6 X-Message-ID-Hash: RBG5P56ZVUNSFOUKNVDIDGXOEBCME6G6 X-MailFrom: f4grx@f4grx.net X-Mailman-Rule-Misses: dmarc-mitigation; no-senders; approved; emergency; loop; banned-address; member-moderation; nonmember-moderation; administrivia; implicit-dest; max-recipients; max-size; news-moderation; no-subject; digests; suspicious-header X-Mailman-Version: 3.3.6b1 Precedence: list Subject: [TUHS] Software written in B List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list Archived-At: List-Archive: List-Help: List-Owner: List-Post: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: Hello everyone, this is my first post on this list. After looking at the archives for this mailing list, I have seen that the B language has been discussed several times already. After viewing Ken Thompson's interview by Brian Kernighan at VCF East 2019, I became interested in the B language, as it seemed full-featured for system programming, close to C, and simple enough to write a parser for it without a code generation tool. So for fun and self-education, I am now writing a (or yet another) B compiler, in C, after reading Jack Crenshaw's "Let's build a compiler" documentation ( https://compilers.iecc.com/crenshaw/ ) Here it is: https://git.sr.ht/~f4grx/bpars It is now starting to generate code for the 68hc11 8-bit platform. It can also generate C code. I have written some test programs, found some B examples, but I thought it would be great to use my compiler with actual B software. Of course, B was a "transition" language, that did not have a continued use as soon as it evolved into C. so if any software remains, it will be quite hard to find. And here is my question, is any of you aware of original B source code archives? or are in touch with people that would know? In particular, I read on this document written by Dennis Ritchie: https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/chist.html > After the TMG version of B was working, Thompson rewrote B in itself (a bootstrapping step). I have also read that the YACC tool was initially written in B. There might be other historical B sources that I am not aware of. Do you know if any of this code has survived to this day? Where could I find more information about this? Thank you very much, Sebastien Lorquet (F4GRX)