[TUHS] Re: Any Bell 8-bit UNIX Efforts?

[Jonathan Gray <jsg@jsg.id.au>]

On Wed, Mar 01, 2023 at 02:07:06AM +0000, Ronald Natalie wrote:
> The first chapter of K&R was out as a technical paper at least a year prior
> to the book coming out.
> By the time the book had come out, there had already been some evolution in
> the language.    The “Phototypesetter” and soon after “Version 7” versions
> of the compiler were heading toward what would be come ANSI by the time BDS
> came out.

The background to BDS C is described in an interview with Leor Zolman
http://www.znode51.de/articles/int4.htm

"I wrote the first cut of BDS C between January and April, 1979,
specifically in order to compile a C version of the Othello game written
by Robert Halstead at the Real-Time Systems Lab at MIT"

> 
> Amusingly, I ended up working for an unrelated company called BDS and ended
> up with the BDS.COM domain.   Eventually, we changed the name of the company
> and after brief inquiry from them donated the BDS.COM domain to the compiler
> guys.
> 
> At least it didn’t come with a prayer book like the Metalware compiler
> (which really needed all the divine intervention that it could get).

MetaWare High C, used by AIS/AOS on the PC RT

> 
> ------ Original Message ------
> > From "Rich Salz" <rich.salz@gmail.com>
> To "Dave Horsfall" <dave@horsfall.org>
> Cc "The Eunuchs Hysterical Society" <tuhs@tuhs.org>
> Date 2/28/2023 8:21:42 PM
> Subject [TUHS] Re: Any Bell 8-bit UNIX Efforts?
> 
> > > 
> > > I'm glad that you qualified it with "for the time"; I've used it, and
> > > calling it a "C compiler" was a bit of a stretch[*].  Later on I
> > > bought
> > > the Hi-Tech C compiler, and it was full ANSI, with function prototypes
> > > etc.
> > 
> > Hmm. K&R publication date was February 1978.  BDS C was released in
> > August 1979.  So it was certainly C as known at that time. X3J11 was
> > convened in 1983 and published in 1985. Doesn't seem like a good
> > comparison.
> > >