[TUHS] Fwd: [multicians] History of C (with Multics reference)

[TUHS] Fwd: [multicians] History of C (with Multics reference)

[Dan Cross]

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FYI, interesting.

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Tom Van Vleck <thvv@multicians.org>
Date: Sun, Feb 14, 2021, 12:35 PM
Subject: Re: [multicians] History of C (with Multics reference)
To: <multicians@groups.io>


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
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Re: [TUHS] Fwd: [multicians] History of C (with Multics reference)

[John Gilmore]

> 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
	

Re: [TUHS] Fwd: [multicians] History of C (with Multics reference)

[John Cowan]

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On Tue, Feb 16, 2021 at 1:32 AM John Gilmore <gnu@toad.com> wrote:


> 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.
>

In particular, doing gotos by assigning to a variable is very old-school
APL.



John Cowan          http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan        cowan@ccil.org
Is a chair finely made tragic or comic? Is the portrait of Mona Lisa
good if I desire to see it? Is the bust of Sir Philip Crampton lyrical,
epical or dramatic?  If a man hacking in fury at a block of wood make
there an image of a cow, is that image a work of art? If not, why not?
                --Stephen Dedalus

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Re: [TUHS] Fwd: [multicians] History of C (with Multics reference)

[Dave Horsfall]

On Tue, 16 Feb 2021, John Cowan wrote:

> In particular, doing gotos by assigning to a variable is very old-school 
> APL.

I spent a fun year with APL\360 in CompSci, but could you please elaborate 
on that?  I know; this is an ASCII window on my MacBook so you won't be 
able to show the code :-)

ObOF: Some joker once pinned an 80-column card with APL on it (yes, it can 
be done) with a job card behind it to the Computer Centre's notice board; 
under it was the inscription "Who said that APL programs weren't 
transparent?"

-- Dave, who enjoyed that write-only language

Re: [TUHS] [multicians] History of C (with Multics reference)

[Bakul Shah]

On Feb 16, 2021, at 8:14 PM, Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 16 Feb 2021, John Cowan wrote:
> 
>> In particular, doing gotos by assigning to a variable is very old-school APL.
> 
> I spent a fun year with APL\360 in CompSci, but could you please elaborate on that?  I know; this is an ASCII window on my MacBook so you won't be able to show the code :-)

The goto operator is "-> label", while assignment is "var <- value"
In Ken Iverson's 1962 book "A Programming language" he shows branches
by showing flowchart like arrow connecting a source stmt to target
but he doesn't use any goto or branch operator symbol or labels. So
not sure what John means.

As a grad student I did part time programming for a prof doing research
in cancer epidemiology. I convinced him to let me use APL instead of
PL/I but the "funny money" quickly ran out and it was back to PL/I!

Re: [TUHS] [multicians] History of C (with Multics reference)

[John Cowan]

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On Wed, Feb 17, 2021 at 12:52 AM Bakul Shah <bakul@iitbombay.org> wrote:


> The goto operator is "-> label", while assignment is "var <- value"
>

I overstated the case.  However, goto is in fact "-> expression", where
expression is an integer scalar referring to a line (implicitly numbered
from 1 upwards) of the current definition; a goto to  a nonexistent line
such as 0 exits the current definition or program.  Labels were added
later, and are essentially local variables bound to the line number they
appear on.  Modern APL uses structured-programming constructs like all
other post-Ratfor languages.



John Cowan          http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan        cowan@ccil.org
One of the oil men in heaven started a rumor of a gusher down in hell.  All
the other oil men left in a hurry for hell.  As he gets to thinking about
the rumor he had started he says to himself there might be something in
it after all.  So he leaves for hell in a hurry.    --Carl Sandburg

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