Structured Fortran - was Re: Self modifying code, lambda calculus

Sean Caron scaron at umich.edu
Tue Sep 22 17:09:25 CDT 2015


I agree; AFAIK I was never aware of any link between Fortran and early C
... although if you squint at Ratfor just the right way it looks at times a
little bit like K&R without C-style function declarations and calling
semantics and some of the other frosting... I could see this being the root
of the assumption of the link between the two?

Best,

Sean


On Tue, Sep 22, 2015 at 5:22 PM, Jay Jaeger <cube1 at charter.net> wrote:

> Reading the two referenced links leads me to a different conclusion:
> FORTRAN would not do the job at all, so he started from scratch - almost
> immediately.
>
> "Anyway, it took him about a day to realize that he didn't want to do a
> Fortran compiler at all. So he did this very simple language called B
> and got it going on the PDP-7."
>
> "After a rapidly scuttled attempt at Fortran, he created instead a
> language of his own"
>
> (and "rapidly scuttled seems to have been a day).
>
> So I don't agree with the assertion that "'C' started out as a Fortran
> compiler".  Not at all.
>
> JRJ
>
> On 9/22/2015 3:49 PM, Diane Bruce wrote:
> > On Tue, Sep 22, 2015 at 04:35:24PM -0400, Paul Koning wrote:
> >>
> >>> On Sep 22, 2015, at 4:22 PM, Diane Bruce <db at db.net> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> ...
> >>>>> But back in the 60's, every manufacturer had its own variety of
> FORTRAN,
> >>>>> including (IIRC), UNIVAC's own "FORTRAN V".
> >>>> Ah, yes.  I remember WatFor
> >>>
> >>> And Unix was no different, 'C' started out as a Fortran compiler.
> >>
> >> Really?  "citation needed".
> >
> > http://www.princeton.edu/~hos/Mahoney/expotape.htm
> >
> >
> https://web.archive.org/web/20030501014008/http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/chist.html
> >
> >
> >>
> >>      paul
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> > Diane
> >
>


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