From: arnold@skeeve.com
To: kenbob@gmail.com, bakul@iitbombay.org
Cc: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org, eugene@soe.ucsc.edu
Subject: Re: [TUHS] A New History of Modern Computing - my thoughts
Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2021 00:46:56 -0700 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <202111290746.1AT7kudb001037@freefriends.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <E4D6B279-07DD-40B5-84C4-432D1E75CABD@iitbombay.org>
Bakul Shah <bakul@iitbombay.org> wrote:
> Was B, or rather BCPL, influenced by Algol68? It too had
> <var> <op>:= <value>
> as a shorthand for
> <var> := <var> op <value>
> Its declaration
> <type> <name>
> is the same as in C. Though in A68 this was a shorthand for
> ref <type> <name> = loc <type>
I don't know if it was purposeful or not, but Algol 68 had the notion
of deproceduring - i.e. function call, which seems to have carried over
into C where the name of function is a pointer to it. You can do
void myproc();
void (*functptr) = myproc;
...
funcptr()
to call through the pointer. (Even though the K&R book taught us
to use (*funcptr)(), the syntax above worked at least as far back
as PCC.)
Did C pick this up from Algol 68? I have no idea, but it would not
surprise me if it had.
Arnold
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2021-11-29 7:49 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 29+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2021-11-28 20:26 Jon Steinhart
2021-11-28 21:07 ` Rob Pike
2021-11-28 21:15 ` Jon Steinhart
2021-11-28 21:31 ` Ken Thompson
2021-11-28 21:47 ` Jon Steinhart
2021-11-28 22:17 ` Rob Pike
2021-11-29 0:19 ` Clem Cole
2021-11-29 1:12 ` Larry McVoy
2021-11-29 2:23 ` Bakul Shah
2021-11-30 19:27 ` Ralph Corderoy
2021-12-01 8:46 ` Rich Morin
2021-12-01 12:28 ` Al Kossow
2021-11-30 3:18 ` Larry McVoy
2021-11-29 1:18 ` George Michaelson
2021-11-29 1:36 ` Bakul Shah
2021-11-29 1:47 ` Bakul Shah
2021-11-29 7:46 ` arnold [this message]
2021-11-29 7:52 ` arnold
2021-11-29 14:44 ` Larry McVoy
2021-11-29 12:11 ` Michael Kjörling
2021-11-28 21:23 ` Thomas Paulsen
2021-11-28 21:39 ` Steve Nickolas
2021-11-28 22:41 ` Ron Natalie
2021-11-28 21:40 ` Larry McVoy
2021-11-29 15:37 ` Phil Budne
2021-11-28 23:12 Noel Chiappa
2021-11-28 23:35 ` Adam Thornton
2021-11-29 1:53 ` John Cowan
2021-11-29 13:48 ` Dan Halbert
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