Hi All. Mainly for fun (sic), I decided to revive the Ratfor (Rational Fortran) preprocessor. Please see: https://github.com/arnoldrobbins/ratfor I started with the V6 code, then added the V7, V8 and V10 versions on top of it. Each one has its own branch so that you can look at the original code, if you wish. The man page and the paper from the V7 manual are also included. Starting with the Tenth Edition version, I set about to modernize the code and get it to compile and run on a modern-day system. (ANSI style declarations and function headers, modern include files, use of getopt, and most importantly, correct use of Yacc yyval and yylval variables.) You will need Berkely Yacc installed as byacc in order to build it. I have only touch-tested it, but so far it seems OK. 'make' runs in like 2 seconds, really quick. On my Ubuntu Linux systems, it compiles with no warnings. I hope to eventually add a test suite also, if I can steal some time. Before anyone asks, no, I don't think anybody today has any real use for it. This was simply "for fun", and because Ratfor has a soft spot in my heart. "Software Tools" was, for me, the most influential programming book that I ever read. I don't think there's a better book to convey the "zen" of Unix. Thanks, Arnold
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1756 bytes --] On Wed, Dec 1, 2021 at 3:40 PM Arnold Robbins <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote: > "Software Tools" was, for me, the most influential > programming book that I ever read. I don't think there's a better > book to convey the "zen" of Unix. > +1. Jez Higgins is in the process of rewriting _Software Tools in Pascal_ into C++ in a project called "stinc++". His blog index is at < https://www.jezuk.co.uk/tags/software-tools-in-c++.html> and the repo is at <https://github.com/jezhiggins/stiX/>. He's up through uniq in Chapter 4 so far. He writes: "I first found Software Tools in Pascal a bit over 20 years ago, hidden in amongst old VAX manuals in the library of the company where I worked at the time. Unusually for a technical book, Software Tools in Pascal has a terrific narrative. It starts with a tiny task – copy everything from the console input to the console output – and presents the correspondingly tiny program. Step by step, program by program, you arrive at the end of the book with an ex-like line editor, a roff-style print formatter, and a macro processor. En route, you take in filtering, file archiving, sorting, and regular expressions. Each incremental step seems so logical and the code presented is so clear, that you just want to keep reading. Chunks of code in a book can be rather tedious, but Kernighan and Plauger’s is a joy. The lessons imparted on simplicity, clarity, efficiency, on tools and the Unix philosophy, in common sense, how each decision affects the finished program – well, they are at the core of what we do, and how we should think about programming. Your mind can only be blown once, but I re-read bits of this book often to remind myself of the feeling it gave me." [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2939 bytes --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2262 bytes --] Arnold -- sounds fun. Thank you!!! I'll add it to my growing pile of things I want to play with at some point. I too had a wonderful childhood experience with the SW tools. Somebody had a number of them running on a VMS box when all we had was the VMS Fortran compiler, no C yet. I am curious why did you decide to use byacc? I would have thought in a desire to modernize and make it more available on a modern system -- was there something in byacc that could not be done easily in bison? To be honest, I had thought Robert Corbett did them both and bison was the successor to byacc, but I'm not a compiler guy - so I'm suspecting that there must be a difference/reason. As I said, this is purely curiosity -- an educational opportunity. Thanks again, Clem ᐧ On Wed, Dec 1, 2021 at 3:41 PM Arnold Robbins <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote: > Hi All. > > Mainly for fun (sic), I decided to revive the Ratfor (Rational > Fortran) preprocessor. Please see: > > https://github.com/arnoldrobbins/ratfor > > I started with the V6 code, then added the V7, V8 and V10 versions > on top of it. Each one has its own branch so that you can look > at the original code, if you wish. The man page and the paper from > the V7 manual are also included. > > Starting with the Tenth Edition version, I set about to modernize > the code and get it to compile and run on a modern-day system. > (ANSI style declarations and function headers, modern include files, > use of getopt, and most importantly, correct use of Yacc yyval and > yylval variables.) > > You will need Berkely Yacc installed as byacc in order to build it. > > I have only touch-tested it, but so far it seems OK. 'make' runs in like 2 > seconds, really quick. On my Ubuntu Linux systems, it compiles with > no warnings. > > I hope to eventually add a test suite also, if I can steal some time. > > Before anyone asks, no, I don't think anybody today has any real use > for it. This was simply "for fun", and because Ratfor has a soft > spot in my heart. "Software Tools" was, for me, the most influential > programming book that I ever read. I don't think there's a better > book to convey the "zen" of Unix. > > Thanks, > > Arnold > [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 3969 bytes --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2961 bytes --] All you folks revisiting the Software Tools should remember that there was an entire movement around the first book, based at Lawrence Berkeley Lab. The Software Tools group, an offshoot of Usenix, had about 2000 members. We created an almost-entire Unix environment based on a virtual operating system that we designed, inspired of course by Kernighan's ideas. The collection was ported to over 50 operating systems, including some without file systems. This is all still freely available, and stored with the Unix archives. Deborah On 12/1/21 12:59 PM, Clem Cole wrote: > Arnold -- sounds fun. Thank you!!! I'll add it to my growing pile of > things I want to play with at some point. I too had a wonderful > childhood experience with the SW tools. Somebody had a number of them > running on a VMS box when all we had was the VMS Fortran compiler, no > C yet. > > I am curious why did you decide to use byacc? I would have thought > in a desire to modernize and make it more available on a modern system > -- was there something in byacc that could not be done easily in > bison? To be honest, I had thought Robert Corbett did them both and > bison was the successor to byacc, but I'm not a compiler guy - so I'm > suspecting that there must be a difference/reason. As I said, this > is purely curiosity -- an educational opportunity. > > Thanks again, > Clem > ᐧ > > On Wed, Dec 1, 2021 at 3:41 PM Arnold Robbins <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote: > > Hi All. > > Mainly for fun (sic), I decided to revive the Ratfor (Rational > Fortran) preprocessor. Please see: > > https://github.com/arnoldrobbins/ratfor > > I started with the V6 code, then added the V7, V8 and V10 versions > on top of it. Each one has its own branch so that you can look > at the original code, if you wish. The man page and the paper from > the V7 manual are also included. > > Starting with the Tenth Edition version, I set about to modernize > the code and get it to compile and run on a modern-day system. > (ANSI style declarations and function headers, modern include files, > use of getopt, and most importantly, correct use of Yacc yyval and > yylval variables.) > > You will need Berkely Yacc installed as byacc in order to build it. > > I have only touch-tested it, but so far it seems OK. 'make' runs > in like 2 > seconds, really quick. On my Ubuntu Linux systems, it compiles with > no warnings. > > I hope to eventually add a test suite also, if I can steal some time. > > Before anyone asks, no, I don't think anybody today has any real use > for it. This was simply "for fun", and because Ratfor has a soft > spot in my heart. "Software Tools" was, for me, the most influential > programming book that I ever read. I don't think there's a better > book to convey the "zen" of Unix. > > Thanks, > > Arnold > [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 6042 bytes --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3221 bytes --] On Wed, 1 Dec 2021 at 17:17, Deborah Scherrer <dscherrer@solar.stanford.edu> wrote: > All you folks revisiting the Software Tools should remember that there was > an entire movement around the first book, based at Lawrence Berkeley Lab. > The Software Tools group, an offshoot of Usenix, had about 2000 members. > We created an almost-entire Unix environment based on a virtual operating > system that we designed, inspired of course by Kernighan's ideas. The > collection was ported to over 50 operating systems, including some without > file systems. This is all still freely available, and stored with the > Unix archives. > Could you provide a link to said environment, and suggest what sort of machines it might have run on? I probably have something here that will do it, and I am very interested. -Henry > On 12/1/21 12:59 PM, Clem Cole wrote: > > Arnold -- sounds fun. Thank you!!! I'll add it to my growing pile of > things I want to play with at some point. I too had a wonderful childhood > experience with the SW tools. Somebody had a number of them running on a > VMS box when all we had was the VMS Fortran compiler, no C yet. > > I am curious why did you decide to use byacc? I would have thought in a > desire to modernize and make it more available on a modern system -- was > there something in byacc that could not be done easily in bison? To be > honest, I had thought Robert Corbett did them both and bison was the > successor to byacc, but I'm not a compiler guy - so I'm suspecting that > there must be a difference/reason. As I said, this is purely curiosity -- > an educational opportunity. > > Thanks again, > Clem > ᐧ > > On Wed, Dec 1, 2021 at 3:41 PM Arnold Robbins <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote: > >> Hi All. >> >> Mainly for fun (sic), I decided to revive the Ratfor (Rational >> Fortran) preprocessor. Please see: >> >> https://github.com/arnoldrobbins/ratfor >> >> I started with the V6 code, then added the V7, V8 and V10 versions >> on top of it. Each one has its own branch so that you can look >> at the original code, if you wish. The man page and the paper from >> the V7 manual are also included. >> >> Starting with the Tenth Edition version, I set about to modernize >> the code and get it to compile and run on a modern-day system. >> (ANSI style declarations and function headers, modern include files, >> use of getopt, and most importantly, correct use of Yacc yyval and >> yylval variables.) >> >> You will need Berkely Yacc installed as byacc in order to build it. >> >> I have only touch-tested it, but so far it seems OK. 'make' runs in like >> 2 >> seconds, really quick. On my Ubuntu Linux systems, it compiles with >> no warnings. >> >> I hope to eventually add a test suite also, if I can steal some time. >> >> Before anyone asks, no, I don't think anybody today has any real use >> for it. This was simply "for fun", and because Ratfor has a soft >> spot in my heart. "Software Tools" was, for me, the most influential >> programming book that I ever read. I don't think there's a better >> book to convey the "zen" of Unix. >> >> Thanks, >> >> Arnold >> > [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 5828 bytes --]
I installed the STUG tape on our CDC Cyber 18/30 minicomputer and went from clunky to cool. A mentor Bob Stearns loaned me a copy of the book and it changed my life. After Bob passed away, his widow gave me the book. I was very touched.
The Software Tools Groups work certainly made a big difference before Unix was widely available.
Brantley Coile
> On Dec 1, 2021, at 4:14 PM, Deborah Scherrer <dscherrer@solar.stanford.edu> wrote:
>
> All you folks revisiting the Software Tools should remember that there was an entire movement around the first book, based at Lawrence Berkeley Lab. The Software Tools group, an offshoot of Usenix, had about 2000 members. We created an almost-entire Unix environment based on a virtual operating system that we designed, inspired of course by Kernighan's ideas. The collection was ported to over 50 operating systems, including some without file systems. This is all still freely available, and stored with the Unix archives.
>
> Deborah
> On 12/1/21 12:59 PM, Clem Cole wrote:
>> Arnold -- sounds fun. Thank you!!! I'll add it to my growing pile of things I want to play with at some point. I too had a wonderful childhood experience with the SW tools. Somebody had a number of them running on a VMS box when all we had was the VMS Fortran compiler, no C yet.
>>
>> I am curious why did you decide to use byacc? I would have thought in a desire to modernize and make it more available on a modern system -- was there something in byacc that could not be done easily in bison? To be honest, I had thought Robert Corbett did them both and bison was the successor to byacc, but I'm not a compiler guy - so I'm suspecting that there must be a difference/reason. As I said, this is purely curiosity -- an educational opportunity.
>>
>> Thanks again,
>> Clem
>> ᐧ
>>
>> On Wed, Dec 1, 2021 at 3:41 PM Arnold Robbins <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote:
>> Hi All.
>>
>> Mainly for fun (sic), I decided to revive the Ratfor (Rational
>> Fortran) preprocessor. Please see:
>>
>> https://github.com/arnoldrobbins/ratfor
>>
>> I started with the V6 code, then added the V7, V8 and V10 versions
>> on top of it. Each one has its own branch so that you can look
>> at the original code, if you wish. The man page and the paper from
>> the V7 manual are also included.
>>
>> Starting with the Tenth Edition version, I set about to modernize
>> the code and get it to compile and run on a modern-day system.
>> (ANSI style declarations and function headers, modern include files,
>> use of getopt, and most importantly, correct use of Yacc yyval and
>> yylval variables.)
>>
>> You will need Berkely Yacc installed as byacc in order to build it.
>>
>> I have only touch-tested it, but so far it seems OK. 'make' runs in like 2
>> seconds, really quick. On my Ubuntu Linux systems, it compiles with
>> no warnings.
>>
>> I hope to eventually add a test suite also, if I can steal some time.
>>
>> Before anyone asks, no, I don't think anybody today has any real use
>> for it. This was simply "for fun", and because Ratfor has a soft
>> spot in my heart. "Software Tools" was, for me, the most influential
>> programming book that I ever read. I don't think there's a better
>> book to convey the "zen" of Unix.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Arnold
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3451 bytes --] https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Applications/Software_Tools/ ᐧ On Wed, Dec 1, 2021 at 5:25 PM Henry Bent <henry.r.bent@gmail.com> wrote: > On Wed, 1 Dec 2021 at 17:17, Deborah Scherrer < > dscherrer@solar.stanford.edu> wrote: > >> All you folks revisiting the Software Tools should remember that there >> was an entire movement around the first book, based at Lawrence Berkeley >> Lab. The Software Tools group, an offshoot of Usenix, had about 2000 >> members. We created an almost-entire Unix environment based on a virtual >> operating system that we designed, inspired of course by Kernighan's >> ideas. The collection was ported to over 50 operating systems, including >> some without file systems. This is all still freely available, and stored >> with the Unix archives. >> > Could you provide a link to said environment, and suggest what sort of > machines it might have run on? I probably have something here that will do > it, and I am very interested. > > -Henry > > >> On 12/1/21 12:59 PM, Clem Cole wrote: >> >> Arnold -- sounds fun. Thank you!!! I'll add it to my growing pile of >> things I want to play with at some point. I too had a wonderful childhood >> experience with the SW tools. Somebody had a number of them running on a >> VMS box when all we had was the VMS Fortran compiler, no C yet. >> >> I am curious why did you decide to use byacc? I would have thought in a >> desire to modernize and make it more available on a modern system -- was >> there something in byacc that could not be done easily in bison? To be >> honest, I had thought Robert Corbett did them both and bison was the >> successor to byacc, but I'm not a compiler guy - so I'm suspecting that >> there must be a difference/reason. As I said, this is purely curiosity -- >> an educational opportunity. >> >> Thanks again, >> Clem >> ᐧ >> >> On Wed, Dec 1, 2021 at 3:41 PM Arnold Robbins <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote: >> >>> Hi All. >>> >>> Mainly for fun (sic), I decided to revive the Ratfor (Rational >>> Fortran) preprocessor. Please see: >>> >>> https://github.com/arnoldrobbins/ratfor >>> >>> I started with the V6 code, then added the V7, V8 and V10 versions >>> on top of it. Each one has its own branch so that you can look >>> at the original code, if you wish. The man page and the paper from >>> the V7 manual are also included. >>> >>> Starting with the Tenth Edition version, I set about to modernize >>> the code and get it to compile and run on a modern-day system. >>> (ANSI style declarations and function headers, modern include files, >>> use of getopt, and most importantly, correct use of Yacc yyval and >>> yylval variables.) >>> >>> You will need Berkely Yacc installed as byacc in order to build it. >>> >>> I have only touch-tested it, but so far it seems OK. 'make' runs in >>> like 2 >>> seconds, really quick. On my Ubuntu Linux systems, it compiles with >>> no warnings. >>> >>> I hope to eventually add a test suite also, if I can steal some time. >>> >>> Before anyone asks, no, I don't think anybody today has any real use >>> for it. This was simply "for fun", and because Ratfor has a soft >>> spot in my heart. "Software Tools" was, for me, the most influential >>> programming book that I ever read. I don't think there's a better >>> book to convey the "zen" of Unix. >>> >>> Thanks, >>> >>> Arnold >>> >> [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 6715 bytes --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 4461 bytes --] Thank you, Clem. I am working on getting the tools running in DOSBox, which seemed most straightforward. The Byte article (the scan of which I am very grateful for; not having to go trawling through the stacks at the Oberlin College library is always a plus) claims that the tools have been implemented on: ACOS Amdahl Apollo AN/UYK Burroughs CDC Cray Data General DEC FACOM GEC HP HITAC Honeywell IBM Intel Interdata Modcomp Multics NCR Perkin-Elmer Prime Rolm SEL Tandem Univac Wang Xerox CP/M Machines MS/DOS Machines UNIX Machines Which is quite the list; I've never even heard of a few of those! Based on the files in the UNIX Archive, am I to assume that most of those ports took advantage of a native Pascal compiler? That's how I'm planning to bring the tools up on my local RT-11 machine. -Henry On Wed, 1 Dec 2021 at 19:34, Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote: > https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Applications/Software_Tools/ > ᐧ > > On Wed, Dec 1, 2021 at 5:25 PM Henry Bent <henry.r.bent@gmail.com> wrote: > >> On Wed, 1 Dec 2021 at 17:17, Deborah Scherrer < >> dscherrer@solar.stanford.edu> wrote: >> >>> All you folks revisiting the Software Tools should remember that there >>> was an entire movement around the first book, based at Lawrence Berkeley >>> Lab. The Software Tools group, an offshoot of Usenix, had about 2000 >>> members. We created an almost-entire Unix environment based on a virtual >>> operating system that we designed, inspired of course by Kernighan's >>> ideas. The collection was ported to over 50 operating systems, including >>> some without file systems. This is all still freely available, and stored >>> with the Unix archives. >>> >> Could you provide a link to said environment, and suggest what sort of >> machines it might have run on? I probably have something here that will do >> it, and I am very interested. >> >> -Henry >> >> >>> On 12/1/21 12:59 PM, Clem Cole wrote: >>> >>> Arnold -- sounds fun. Thank you!!! I'll add it to my growing pile of >>> things I want to play with at some point. I too had a wonderful childhood >>> experience with the SW tools. Somebody had a number of them running on a >>> VMS box when all we had was the VMS Fortran compiler, no C yet. >>> >>> I am curious why did you decide to use byacc? I would have thought in >>> a desire to modernize and make it more available on a modern system -- was >>> there something in byacc that could not be done easily in bison? To be >>> honest, I had thought Robert Corbett did them both and bison was the >>> successor to byacc, but I'm not a compiler guy - so I'm suspecting that >>> there must be a difference/reason. As I said, this is purely curiosity -- >>> an educational opportunity. >>> >>> Thanks again, >>> Clem >>> ᐧ >>> >>> On Wed, Dec 1, 2021 at 3:41 PM Arnold Robbins <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote: >>> >>>> Hi All. >>>> >>>> Mainly for fun (sic), I decided to revive the Ratfor (Rational >>>> Fortran) preprocessor. Please see: >>>> >>>> https://github.com/arnoldrobbins/ratfor >>>> >>>> I started with the V6 code, then added the V7, V8 and V10 versions >>>> on top of it. Each one has its own branch so that you can look >>>> at the original code, if you wish. The man page and the paper from >>>> the V7 manual are also included. >>>> >>>> Starting with the Tenth Edition version, I set about to modernize >>>> the code and get it to compile and run on a modern-day system. >>>> (ANSI style declarations and function headers, modern include files, >>>> use of getopt, and most importantly, correct use of Yacc yyval and >>>> yylval variables.) >>>> >>>> You will need Berkely Yacc installed as byacc in order to build it. >>>> >>>> I have only touch-tested it, but so far it seems OK. 'make' runs in >>>> like 2 >>>> seconds, really quick. On my Ubuntu Linux systems, it compiles with >>>> no warnings. >>>> >>>> I hope to eventually add a test suite also, if I can steal some time. >>>> >>>> Before anyone asks, no, I don't think anybody today has any real use >>>> for it. This was simply "for fun", and because Ratfor has a soft >>>> spot in my heart. "Software Tools" was, for me, the most influential >>>> programming book that I ever read. I don't think there's a better >>>> book to convey the "zen" of Unix. >>>> >>>> Thanks, >>>> >>>> Arnold >>>> >>> [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 8321 bytes --]
Hi Clem. Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote: > I am curious why did you decide to use byacc? I did try Bison first. But, for reasons I have not yet fathomed, the code makes use of yyval (not yylval!), which is $$ in yacc productions. Bison does not make that available as a global variable. > To be honest, I had thought Robert Corbett did them both I am not sure of the exact provenance. My understanding is that RMS started with Corbett's yacc and built bison out of it. But I could be totally wrong. Arnold
Indeed.
I never worked with this directly, though. I went to grad school
at Georgia Tech, where some of the students had started with the tools
from the book and built a beautiful Unix-like subsystem on top of
Primos on Pr1me minicomputers. (This code was recoverd in 2019,
after thinking it'd been lost for 30+ years!)
I never asked, but I suspect that the Georgia Tech guys simply didn't
know about the LBL work, or else they developed in parallel.
Arnold
Deborah Scherrer <dscherrer@solar.stanford.edu> wrote:
> All you folks revisiting the Software Tools should remember that there
> was an entire movement around the first book, based at Lawrence Berkeley
> Lab. The Software Tools group, an offshoot of Usenix, had about 2000
> members. We created an almost-entire Unix environment based on a
> virtual operating system that we designed, inspired of course by
> Kernighan's ideas. The collection was ported to over 50 operating
> systems, including some without file systems. This is all still freely
> available, and stored with the Unix archives.
>
> Deborah
>
> On 12/1/21 12:59 PM, Clem Cole wrote:
> > Arnold -- sounds fun. Thank you!!! I'll add it to my growing pile of
> > things I want to play with at some point. I too had a wonderful
> > childhood experience with the SW tools. Somebody had a number of them
> > running on a VMS box when all we had was the VMS Fortran compiler, no
> > C yet.
> >
> > I am curious why did you decide to use byacc? I would have thought
> > in a desire to modernize and make it more available on a modern system
> > -- was there something in byacc that could not be done easily in
> > bison? To be honest, I had thought Robert Corbett did them both and
> > bison was the successor to byacc, but I'm not a compiler guy - so I'm
> > suspecting that there must be a difference/reason. As I said, this
> > is purely curiosity -- an educational opportunity.
> >
> > Thanks again,
> > Clem
> > ᐧ
> >
> > On Wed, Dec 1, 2021 at 3:41 PM Arnold Robbins <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hi All.
> >
> > Mainly for fun (sic), I decided to revive the Ratfor (Rational
> > Fortran) preprocessor. Please see:
> >
> > https://github.com/arnoldrobbins/ratfor
> >
> > I started with the V6 code, then added the V7, V8 and V10 versions
> > on top of it. Each one has its own branch so that you can look
> > at the original code, if you wish. The man page and the paper from
> > the V7 manual are also included.
> >
> > Starting with the Tenth Edition version, I set about to modernize
> > the code and get it to compile and run on a modern-day system.
> > (ANSI style declarations and function headers, modern include files,
> > use of getopt, and most importantly, correct use of Yacc yyval and
> > yylval variables.)
> >
> > You will need Berkely Yacc installed as byacc in order to build it.
> >
> > I have only touch-tested it, but so far it seems OK. 'make' runs
> > in like 2
> > seconds, really quick. On my Ubuntu Linux systems, it compiles with
> > no warnings.
> >
> > I hope to eventually add a test suite also, if I can steal some time.
> >
> > Before anyone asks, no, I don't think anybody today has any real use
> > for it. This was simply "for fun", and because Ratfor has a soft
> > spot in my heart. "Software Tools" was, for me, the most influential
> > programming book that I ever read. I don't think there's a better
> > book to convey the "zen" of Unix.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Arnold
> >
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 5440 bytes --] Henry -- most people that I am aware used the original Fortran-IV version since that was the Lingua-Franca. The Pascal version was a few years later, and frankly other than to read the book, I personally never ran the results from them. But I can say I did use the original Fortran version under VMS back in the day. As bwk says in the Pascal edition, it was actually a difficult thing to do because Pascal lacked many features that really made it uniform across implementations, portable between systems themselves, and as a reasonable systems programming language. See: Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language <http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/bwk-on-pascal.html> Clem ᐧ On Thu, Dec 2, 2021 at 12:44 AM Henry Bent <henry.r.bent@gmail.com> wrote: > Thank you, Clem. I am working on getting the tools running in DOSBox, > which seemed most straightforward. > > The Byte article (the scan of which I am very grateful for; not having to > go trawling through the stacks at the Oberlin College library is always a > plus) claims that the tools have been implemented on: > > ACOS > Amdahl > Apollo > AN/UYK > Burroughs > CDC > Cray > Data General > DEC > FACOM > GEC > HP > HITAC > Honeywell > IBM > Intel > Interdata > Modcomp > Multics > NCR > Perkin-Elmer > Prime > Rolm > SEL > Tandem > Univac > Wang > Xerox > CP/M Machines > MS/DOS Machines > UNIX Machines > > Which is quite the list; I've never even heard of a few of those! Based > on the files in the UNIX Archive, am I to assume that most of those ports > took advantage of a native Pascal compiler? That's how I'm planning to > bring the tools up on my local RT-11 machine. > > -Henry > > On Wed, 1 Dec 2021 at 19:34, Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote: > >> https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Applications/Software_Tools/ >> ᐧ >> >> On Wed, Dec 1, 2021 at 5:25 PM Henry Bent <henry.r.bent@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> On Wed, 1 Dec 2021 at 17:17, Deborah Scherrer < >>> dscherrer@solar.stanford.edu> wrote: >>> >>>> All you folks revisiting the Software Tools should remember that there >>>> was an entire movement around the first book, based at Lawrence Berkeley >>>> Lab. The Software Tools group, an offshoot of Usenix, had about 2000 >>>> members. We created an almost-entire Unix environment based on a virtual >>>> operating system that we designed, inspired of course by Kernighan's >>>> ideas. The collection was ported to over 50 operating systems, including >>>> some without file systems. This is all still freely available, and stored >>>> with the Unix archives. >>>> >>> Could you provide a link to said environment, and suggest what sort of >>> machines it might have run on? I probably have something here that will do >>> it, and I am very interested. >>> >>> -Henry >>> >>> >>>> On 12/1/21 12:59 PM, Clem Cole wrote: >>>> >>>> Arnold -- sounds fun. Thank you!!! I'll add it to my growing pile of >>>> things I want to play with at some point. I too had a wonderful childhood >>>> experience with the SW tools. Somebody had a number of them running on a >>>> VMS box when all we had was the VMS Fortran compiler, no C yet. >>>> >>>> I am curious why did you decide to use byacc? I would have thought in >>>> a desire to modernize and make it more available on a modern system -- was >>>> there something in byacc that could not be done easily in bison? To be >>>> honest, I had thought Robert Corbett did them both and bison was the >>>> successor to byacc, but I'm not a compiler guy - so I'm suspecting that >>>> there must be a difference/reason. As I said, this is purely curiosity -- >>>> an educational opportunity. >>>> >>>> Thanks again, >>>> Clem >>>> ᐧ >>>> >>>> On Wed, Dec 1, 2021 at 3:41 PM Arnold Robbins <arnold@skeeve.com> >>>> wrote: >>>> >>>>> Hi All. >>>>> >>>>> Mainly for fun (sic), I decided to revive the Ratfor (Rational >>>>> Fortran) preprocessor. Please see: >>>>> >>>>> https://github.com/arnoldrobbins/ratfor >>>>> >>>>> I started with the V6 code, then added the V7, V8 and V10 versions >>>>> on top of it. Each one has its own branch so that you can look >>>>> at the original code, if you wish. The man page and the paper from >>>>> the V7 manual are also included. >>>>> >>>>> Starting with the Tenth Edition version, I set about to modernize >>>>> the code and get it to compile and run on a modern-day system. >>>>> (ANSI style declarations and function headers, modern include files, >>>>> use of getopt, and most importantly, correct use of Yacc yyval and >>>>> yylval variables.) >>>>> >>>>> You will need Berkely Yacc installed as byacc in order to build it. >>>>> >>>>> I have only touch-tested it, but so far it seems OK. 'make' runs in >>>>> like 2 >>>>> seconds, really quick. On my Ubuntu Linux systems, it compiles with >>>>> no warnings. >>>>> >>>>> I hope to eventually add a test suite also, if I can steal some time. >>>>> >>>>> Before anyone asks, no, I don't think anybody today has any real use >>>>> for it. This was simply "for fun", and because Ratfor has a soft >>>>> spot in my heart. "Software Tools" was, for me, the most influential >>>>> programming book that I ever read. I don't think there's a better >>>>> book to convey the "zen" of Unix. >>>>> >>>>> Thanks, >>>>> >>>>> Arnold >>>>> >>>> [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 9958 bytes --]
I lead a dual technological life. I usually don't talk about one side on email lists about the other. Sometimes creates heat. But I'm completely convinced of the value of both sides. Let's call one 1127, after the department number at Bell Labs, and the other Wirthian. Thomsonian and Wirthian would also be appropriate.
I loved the WPNMFPL paper! Later, Wirth fixed all the language issues mentioned in that paper with his last language, Oberon. Some issues in the paper are issues of taste, and Oberon is, well, strongly Wirthian, so one might object to it if their taste corresponds with BWK's.
DMR said at HOPL that Pascal and C have a lot in common. He said one might even expect there was information cross flow, which he stated there wasn't. That was what DMR said, not me.
I program in C on Plan 9 because it's the best tool for what I'm doing. I could easily see me living in Oberon. I might even like it better. Some days. But then...
See how great it is to live a duplicitous life. Best of both.
Brantley
> On Dec 2, 2021, at 9:15 AM, Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
>
> Henry -- most people that I am aware used the original Fortran-IV version since that was the Lingua-Franca. The Pascal version was a few years later, and frankly other than to read the book, I personally never ran the results from them. But I can say I did use the original Fortran version under VMS back in the day. As bwk says in the Pascal edition, it was actually a difficult thing to do because Pascal lacked many features that really made it uniform across implementations, portable between systems themselves, and as a reasonable systems programming language. See: Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language
>
> Clem
> ᐧ
>
> On Thu, Dec 2, 2021 at 12:44 AM Henry Bent <henry.r.bent@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thank you, Clem. I am working on getting the tools running in DOSBox, which seemed most straightforward.
>
> The Byte article (the scan of which I am very grateful for; not having to go trawling through the stacks at the Oberlin College library is always a plus) claims that the tools have been implemented on:
>
> ACOS
> Amdahl
> Apollo
> AN/UYK
> Burroughs
> CDC
> Cray
> Data General
> DEC
> FACOM
> GEC
> HP
> HITAC
> Honeywell
> IBM
> Intel
> Interdata
> Modcomp
> Multics
> NCR
> Perkin-Elmer
> Prime
> Rolm
> SEL
> Tandem
> Univac
> Wang
> Xerox
> CP/M Machines
> MS/DOS Machines
> UNIX Machines
>
> Which is quite the list; I've never even heard of a few of those! Based on the files in the UNIX Archive, am I to assume that most of those ports took advantage of a native Pascal compiler? That's how I'm planning to bring the tools up on my local RT-11 machine.
>
> -Henry
>
> On Wed, 1 Dec 2021 at 19:34, Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
> https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Applications/Software_Tools/
> ᐧ
>
> On Wed, Dec 1, 2021 at 5:25 PM Henry Bent <henry.r.bent@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 1 Dec 2021 at 17:17, Deborah Scherrer <dscherrer@solar.stanford.edu> wrote:
> All you folks revisiting the Software Tools should remember that there was an entire movement around the first book, based at Lawrence Berkeley Lab. The Software Tools group, an offshoot of Usenix, had about 2000 members. We created an almost-entire Unix environment based on a virtual operating system that we designed, inspired of course by Kernighan's ideas. The collection was ported to over 50 operating systems, including some without file systems. This is all still freely available, and stored with the Unix archives.
>
> Could you provide a link to said environment, and suggest what sort of machines it might have run on? I probably have something here that will do it, and I am very interested.
>
> -Henry
>
> On 12/1/21 12:59 PM, Clem Cole wrote:
>> Arnold -- sounds fun. Thank you!!! I'll add it to my growing pile of things I want to play with at some point. I too had a wonderful childhood experience with the SW tools. Somebody had a number of them running on a VMS box when all we had was the VMS Fortran compiler, no C yet.
>>
>> I am curious why did you decide to use byacc? I would have thought in a desire to modernize and make it more available on a modern system -- was there something in byacc that could not be done easily in bison? To be honest, I had thought Robert Corbett did them both and bison was the successor to byacc, but I'm not a compiler guy - so I'm suspecting that there must be a difference/reason. As I said, this is purely curiosity -- an educational opportunity.
>>
>> Thanks again,
>> Clem
>> ᐧ
>>
>> On Wed, Dec 1, 2021 at 3:41 PM Arnold Robbins <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote:
>> Hi All.
>>
>> Mainly for fun (sic), I decided to revive the Ratfor (Rational
>> Fortran) preprocessor. Please see:
>>
>> https://github.com/arnoldrobbins/ratfor
>>
>> I started with the V6 code, then added the V7, V8 and V10 versions
>> on top of it. Each one has its own branch so that you can look
>> at the original code, if you wish. The man page and the paper from
>> the V7 manual are also included.
>>
>> Starting with the Tenth Edition version, I set about to modernize
>> the code and get it to compile and run on a modern-day system.
>> (ANSI style declarations and function headers, modern include files,
>> use of getopt, and most importantly, correct use of Yacc yyval and
>> yylval variables.)
>>
>> You will need Berkely Yacc installed as byacc in order to build it.
>>
>> I have only touch-tested it, but so far it seems OK. 'make' runs in like 2
>> seconds, really quick. On my Ubuntu Linux systems, it compiles with
>> no warnings.
>>
>> I hope to eventually add a test suite also, if I can steal some time.
>>
>> Before anyone asks, no, I don't think anybody today has any real use
>> for it. This was simply "for fun", and because Ratfor has a soft
>> spot in my heart. "Software Tools" was, for me, the most influential
>> programming book that I ever read. I don't think there's a better
>> book to convey the "zen" of Unix.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Arnold
Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote: > See: Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language > <http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/bwk-on-pascal.html> Even better: https://github.com/arnoldrobbins/cstr100 This is the troff for that memo; I got it from BWK. :-) Arnold
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 663 bytes --] On Thu, Dec 2, 2021 at 12:45 AM Henry Bent <henry.r.bent@gmail.com> wrote: > The Byte article (the scan of which I am very grateful for; not having to > go trawling through the stacks at the Oberlin College library is always a > plus) claims that the tools have been implemented on: > > Tandem > That would be me; at least I registered it with Addison-Wesley, although someone else may have implemented it independently. I also wrote a shell that took advantage of Guardian-style IPC, using a per-user pipe server that connected up all the monodirectional pipes through itself. Its prompt was ::, which the documentation referred to as the quadpoint prompt. [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1239 bytes --]
Oh no, the Georgia Tech guys were heavily involved with the Software
Tools stuff at Lawrence Berkeley Lab. Were in frequent contact. Did a
superb job of setting up the Tools there and extending them. Good guys!
Debbie
On 12/1/21 11:41 PM, arnold@skeeve.com wrote:
> Indeed.
>
> I never worked with this directly, though. I went to grad school
> at Georgia Tech, where some of the students had started with the tools
> from the book and built a beautiful Unix-like subsystem on top of
> Primos on Pr1me minicomputers. (This code was recoverd in 2019,
> after thinking it'd been lost for 30+ years!)
>
> I never asked, but I suspect that the Georgia Tech guys simply didn't
> know about the LBL work, or else they developed in parallel.
>
> Arnold
>
> Deborah Scherrer <dscherrer@solar.stanford.edu> wrote:
>
>> All you folks revisiting the Software Tools should remember that there
>> was an entire movement around the first book, based at Lawrence Berkeley
>> Lab. The Software Tools group, an offshoot of Usenix, had about 2000
>> members. We created an almost-entire Unix environment based on a
>> virtual operating system that we designed, inspired of course by
>> Kernighan's ideas. The collection was ported to over 50 operating
>> systems, including some without file systems. This is all still freely
>> available, and stored with the Unix archives.
>>
>> Deborah
>>
>> On 12/1/21 12:59 PM, Clem Cole wrote:
>>> Arnold -- sounds fun. Thank you!!! I'll add it to my growing pile of
>>> things I want to play with at some point. I too had a wonderful
>>> childhood experience with the SW tools. Somebody had a number of them
>>> running on a VMS box when all we had was the VMS Fortran compiler, no
>>> C yet.
>>>
>>> I am curious why did you decide to use byacc? I would have thought
>>> in a desire to modernize and make it more available on a modern system
>>> -- was there something in byacc that could not be done easily in
>>> bison? To be honest, I had thought Robert Corbett did them both and
>>> bison was the successor to byacc, but I'm not a compiler guy - so I'm
>>> suspecting that there must be a difference/reason. As I said, this
>>> is purely curiosity -- an educational opportunity.
>>>
>>> Thanks again,
>>> Clem
>>> ᐧ
>>>
>>> On Wed, Dec 1, 2021 at 3:41 PM Arnold Robbins <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi All.
>>>
>>> Mainly for fun (sic), I decided to revive the Ratfor (Rational
>>> Fortran) preprocessor. Please see:
>>>
>>> https://github.com/arnoldrobbins/ratfor
>>>
>>> I started with the V6 code, then added the V7, V8 and V10 versions
>>> on top of it. Each one has its own branch so that you can look
>>> at the original code, if you wish. The man page and the paper from
>>> the V7 manual are also included.
>>>
>>> Starting with the Tenth Edition version, I set about to modernize
>>> the code and get it to compile and run on a modern-day system.
>>> (ANSI style declarations and function headers, modern include files,
>>> use of getopt, and most importantly, correct use of Yacc yyval and
>>> yylval variables.)
>>>
>>> You will need Berkely Yacc installed as byacc in order to build it.
>>>
>>> I have only touch-tested it, but so far it seems OK. 'make' runs
>>> in like 2
>>> seconds, really quick. On my Ubuntu Linux systems, it compiles with
>>> no warnings.
>>>
>>> I hope to eventually add a test suite also, if I can steal some time.
>>>
>>> Before anyone asks, no, I don't think anybody today has any real use
>>> for it. This was simply "for fun", and because Ratfor has a soft
>>> spot in my heart. "Software Tools" was, for me, the most influential
>>> programming book that I ever read. I don't think there's a better
>>> book to convey the "zen" of Unix.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> Arnold
>>>