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From: jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Subject: [TUHS] early cc variable and function names
Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2014 12:11:43 -0400 (EDT)	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20141017161143.5E25618C090@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> (raw)

    > From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)

    >> Did anyone document these sorts of limitations of early cc?

    > I seem to recall at least one document from that period (I think
    > pertaining to the so-called 'Typesetter C') about 'changes to C'.
    > ...
    > I'll see if I can dig them out tomorrow.

OK, there are three documents which sort of fall into this class. First,
there is something titled "New C Compiler Features", no date, available here:

  http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=Interdata732/usr/doc/cdoc/newstuff.nr

no date, but it appears to describe an early version of the so-called
'Typesetter C', mentioned in other documents, so this would be circa 1976 or
so.


There is a second document, untitled, no date, which I have not been able to
locate online at all. I scanned my hard-copy, available here:

  http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/history/unix/CImprovements1.jpg
  ..
  http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/history/unix/CImprovements5.jpg

From the content, it seems to be from shortly after the previous one, so say,
circa 1977.

Sorry about the poor readability (it looked fine on the monitor of the
machine my scanner is attached to); fudging with contrast would probably make
it more readable. When I get the MIT V6 Unix tapes read (they have been sent
off to a specialist in reading old tapes, results soon, I hope) I might be
able to get more info (e.g. date/filename), and machine-readable source.


Finally, there is "Recent Changes to C", from November 15, 1978, available
here:

  http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/cchanges.pdf
  
which documents a few final bits.


There is of course also Dennis M. Ritchie, "The Development of the C
Language", available here:

  http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/chist.html

which is a good, interesting history of C.


    > Also, I have started a note with a list of 'issues with C when you're
    > backporting V7 and later code to V6'

I found several documents which are bits and pieces of this.

  http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/history/unix/C_Backport.txt
  http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/history/unix/V6_C.txt

Too busy to really clean them up at the moment.

	Noel



             reply	other threads:[~2014-10-17 16:11 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 21+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2014-10-17 16:11 Noel Chiappa [this message]
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2014-10-18 10:32 Noel Chiappa
2014-10-18 23:03 ` Ron Natalie
2014-10-18 23:11   ` Dave Horsfall
2014-10-17  2:29 Noel Chiappa
2014-10-17  2:40 ` John Cowan
2014-10-17  2:52   ` Larry McVoy
2014-10-17  3:46     ` John Cowan
2014-10-17  3:54       ` Larry McVoy
2014-10-17 19:41       ` Clem Cole
2014-10-17 20:37     ` random832
2014-10-17 20:42       ` Larry McVoy
2014-10-17  1:51 Mark Longridge
2014-10-17  2:20 ` Milo Velimirovic
2014-10-17  2:21 ` Dave Horsfall
2014-10-17 13:35   ` random832
2014-10-17 13:44     ` Warner Losh
2014-10-17 14:07       ` arnold
2014-10-17 14:22         ` Milo Velimirović
2014-10-17 19:29         ` random832
2014-10-18  7:25 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey

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