23 Jun
2004
23 Jun
'04
12:17 p.m.
>> Q: Current C compilers are written in C.
>> What was the FIRST C compiler written in?
>From: "der Mouse"
<mouse(a)rodents.montreal.qc.ca>
>Was there a well-defined "first C compiler"? I'm not sure there was.
>The language we know today as C has evolved over many years, and it's
>hard to find an obvious place to draw a "before this was not C" line.
Although I would be more inclined to agree with you on some other
languages that have evolved, C was written and documented very
deliberately.
It was written by Titchie and Thompson, and documented by Kernighan and
Ritchie. (K&R). Although there have been many later versions that have
strayed, and the ANSI standard C has significant differences, K&R C
has a known history.
On Wed, 23 Jun 2004, Dwight K. Elvey wrote:
Hi
There was a 'B' as well. I don't recall hearing about a 'A'.
Dwight
There was a predecessor to C, that was mostly theoretical,
and rarely implemented named BCPL. The confusion over whether
the sequence was A B C D v B C P L led to:
> I thought the puzzle was whether C's
successor would
> be *D* or *P*...
On Thu, 24 Jun 2004, Antonio Carlini wrote:
It will be D (or D++, I forget the exact name).
I doubt it.
But C++ claims to be a successor to C.
C# claims to be a successor to C++, although
I don't know whether anybody outside of MICROS~1
takes that seriously.
(Wasn't it Algol that was praised as being a
considerable improvement over its successors ?)