[TUHS] Re: Software written in B

[Sebastien F4GRX <f4grx@f4grx.net>]

Hi,

I just modified my compiler to support both syntaxes, that was easy. I 
am not trying to make my compiler as small as possible.

The 6070 version also has "default:" in the switch statement and "break" 
to exit compound statements, of which I have just implemented the second 
for now. Thats completely backwards compatible with the early version. 
These are just fancy goto and labels.

The ind.b program you shared must have been even earlier, using $( $) 
instead of braces and no parentheses on function names. With the price 
of storage these guys were really minimalists! I can imagine Ken not 
being happy about empty parentheses for functions without parameters :-)

Would you mind to share your sed script to preprocess your B B compiler? 
Thats the only thing missing for me to try compiling it.

Sebastien


Le 23/06/2023 à 16:49, Angelo Papenhoff a écrit :
> I also stumbled over these language differences.
> In my earlier compiler I tried to support all syntax that looked
> reasonable, but now I tried to make the code more accurate to the actual
> thing. I don't know much about the 6070 version of B and scj didn't
> remember many technical details when I asked him about it a few years ago.
>
> For auto vectors you can find an actual example here:
> https://github.com/DoctorWkt/pdp7-unix/blob/master/src/cmd/ind.b#L3
>
> Ken said that the language was the same on the pdp-7 and pdp-11. The
> runtime we have for both are different but this must simply reflect
> different evolutionary stages rather than platform differences.
> I haven't gotten around to building my new compiler yet, but it would be
> interesting to see if it's small enough to fit into the 4kw of pdp-7
> userspace. The runtime would have to be updated and expanded of course.
>
> In any case it should be fun to run it on v1/v2. Have to try that
> on my 11/05 :)
>
> It sure is interesting how many compilers have popped up for B over the
> years. I also have a strangely strong love for this little language.
>
> aap
>
>
> On 23/06/23, Sebastien F4GRX wrote:
>> Hi again,
>>
>> OK I found your compiler project on github: https://github.com/aap/b
>>
>> I see you have introduced changes like this one:
>>
>> -       auto ab[500], ava[150];
>> -       auto dirf, string, av, name[5], s;
>> +       auto ab 1000, ava 150;
>> +       auto dirf, string, av, name 5, s;
>>
>> So it mean that at some point the auto declaration was changed?
>>
>> Oh, yes it was. Here is the original syntax :
>> https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/kbman.html
>>
>> And this one describes the use of quotes for auto arrays, but thats for
>> the H6070! https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/bref.pdf
>>
>> Also in bref, auto a[4] reserves 5 words, but in ken's version auto a 4
>> reserves 4 words.
>>
>> I think I will make a command line option to support both language specs :)
>>
>> And fix my code, because I had found this example
>> https://github.com/Spydr06/BCause/blob/main/examples/fibonacci.b
>>
>> and was convinced that constants in auto were initial values, but I now
>> understand that this is incorrect.
>>
>> Initialized auto variables would have been an avoidable syntactic sugar
>> on these machines!