[TUHS] Resurrecting the B (which came before C) programming language

[TUHS] Resurrecting the B (which came before C) programming language

[Nelson H. F. Beebe]

I was amused this morning to see a post on the tack-devel at lists.sourceforge.net
mailing list (TACK = The Amsterdam Compiler Kit) today from David Given,
who writes:

>> ...
>> ... I took some time off from thinking about register allocation (ugh)
>> and ported the ABC B compiler to the ACK. It's now integrated into the
>> system and everything.
>> 
>> B is Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie's untyped programming language
>> which later acquired types and turned into K&R C. Everything's a machine
>> word, and pointers are *word* address, not byte addresses.
>> 
>> The port's a bit clunky and doesn't generate good code, but it works and
>> it passes its own tests. It runs on all supported backends. There's not
>> much standard library, though.
>> 
>> Example:
>> 
>> https://github.com/davidgiven/ack/blob/default/examples/hilo.b
>> 
>> (Also, in the process it found lots of bugs in the PowerPC mcg backend,
>> now fixed, as well as several subtle bugs in the PowerPC ncg backend; so
>> that's good. I'm pretty sure that this is the only B compiler for the
>> PowerPC in existence.)
>> ...

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- Nelson H. F. Beebe                    Tel: +1 801 581 5254                  -
- University of Utah                    FAX: +1 801 581 4148                  -
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[TUHS] Resurrecting the B (which came before C) programming language

[Angelo Papenhoff]

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On 08/01/17, Nelson H. F. Beebe wrote:
> I was amused this morning to see a post on the tack-devel at lists.sourceforge.net
> mailing list (TACK = The Amsterdam Compiler Kit) today from David Given,
> who writes:
> 
> >> ...
> >> ... I took some time off from thinking about register allocation (ugh)
> >> and ported the ABC B compiler to the ACK. It's now integrated into the
> >> system and everything.
> >> 
> >> B is Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie's untyped programming language
> >> which later acquired types and turned into K&R C. Everything's a machine
> >> word, and pointers are *word* address, not byte addresses.
> >> 
> >> The port's a bit clunky and doesn't generate good code, but it works and
> >> it passes its own tests. It runs on all supported backends. There's not
> >> much standard library, though.
> >> 
> >> Example:
> >> 
> >> https://github.com/davidgiven/ack/blob/default/examples/hilo.b
> >> 
> >> (Also, in the process it found lots of bugs in the PowerPC mcg backend,
> >> now fixed, as well as several subtle bugs in the PowerPC ncg backend; so
> >> that's good. I'm pretty sure that this is the only B compiler for the
> >> PowerPC in existence.)
> >> ...

Some explanation: I wrote abc (https://github.com/aap/abc/) a few years
ago as a toy and because I was annoyed there was no B compiler around.
David and I met at VCFE Zürich in november where I told him about it.
He then proceeded to port it to the ACK.