whence c ? - (nf)

[utzoo!decvax!harpo!seismo!hao!hplabs!hp-pcd!tw]

#R:sdccsu3:-21700:hp-pcd:15300001:000:1473
hp-pcd!tw    Jan  3 10:44:00 1983

Re: origin of C

From: Bell System Technical Journal Vol 57 No 6 Part 2 July-August 1978
      'The C Programming Language' - D. M. Ritchie, et. al.

	The C language in use today is the product of several years of
evolution.  Many of its most important ideas stem from the considerably
older, but still quite vital, language BCPL developed by Martin Richards.
The influence of BCPL on C proceeded indirectly through the language B,
which was written by Ken Thompson in 1970 for the first UNIX system on
the PDP-11.
	Although neither B nor C could really be considered dialects of
BCPL, both share several characteristic features with it:  ...

See also:

S.C.Johnson and B.W.Kerhighan, "The Programming Language B," Comp. Sci.
Tech. Rep. No. 8, Bell Laboratories (January 1973)

and

Martin Richards and Colin Whitby-Strevens, "BCPL - the language and its
compiler", Cambridge University Press, 1979

------------

BCPL (for Basic CPL) was intended as the development language for CPL
(Combined Programming Language), developed jointly by members of the
University Mathematical Laboratory, Cambridge, and the University of
London Computer Unit.  I don't know if CPL was ever implemented, but
BCPL has been ported to quite a lot of machines over the years.  I used
it quite a bit on a 370 back at Rice, and liked it quite a lot. 

See also:

Barron, D.W., Buxton,J.N., Hartley,D.F., Nixon,E. and Strachey,C. "The
main features of CPL", Computer Journal, vol.6 p.134 (1963).