From: John Gilmore <gnu@toad.com>
To: Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com>
Cc: TUHS main list <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] Fwd: [multicians] History of C (with Multics reference)
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 2021 22:31:23 -0800 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <3803.1613457083@hop.toad.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAEoi9W5n_-wPzjtmOro-2SkDrM53WxMd_Eb1f9rDPO9Z4gG1PA@mail.gmail.com>
> Remember the story that Ken Thompson had written a language called "Bon"
> which was one of the forerunners of "B" which then led to "new B" and then
> to "C"?
>
> I just found Ken Thompson's "Bon Users Manual" dated Feb 1, 1969, as told
> to M. D. McIlroy and R. Morris
> in Jerry Saltzer's files online at MIT.
> http://people.csail.mit.edu/saltzer/Multics/MHP-Saltzer-060508/filedrawers/180.btl-misc/Scan%204.PDF
There was clearly a lot of cross-fertilization between early APL systems
and Bon. (APL was the first computer language I dug deeply into.) Some
of the common elements are the interactive execution environment,
untyped variables, and automatic application of builtin functions (like
+) across all elements of arrays.
John
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2021-02-16 6:32 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 6+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
[not found] <1607711516.31417164@apps.rackspace.com>
[not found] ` <30368.1613327707837544705@groups.io>
2021-02-14 19:08 ` Dan Cross
2021-02-16 6:31 ` John Gilmore [this message]
2021-02-17 3:49 ` John Cowan
2021-02-17 4:14 ` Dave Horsfall
2021-02-17 5:51 ` [TUHS] " Bakul Shah
2021-02-18 3:23 ` John Cowan
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