From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: aap@papnet.eu (Angelo Papenhoff) Date: Sun, 8 Jan 2017 20:09:19 +0100 Subject: [TUHS] Resurrecting the B (which came before C) programming language In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20170108190919.GA67926@indra.papnet.eu> 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.