Re: Hi All

[sena <sena@decoy.ath.cx>]

On 10/01/2001 at 11:12 -0500, Hall Stevenson wrote:
> 
> Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie "invented" Unix. The "R" comes from
> Dennis' last name. The "K" comes from another person actually. His name
> is "Brian Kernighan". He invented the programming language "B", which
> Dennis Ritchie evolved into "C".
> 
Actually, you're wrong.

Ken Thompson invented B in 1970. He did it for the first UNIX system, running
on the DEC PDP-7. It was an experimental language.

B was inspired on BCPL (Basic Combined Programming Language), by Martin
Richards. BCPL was a simplification of CPL (Cambridge Programming Language).

Dennis Ritchie wrote C, and then published a book, co-written by him and
Kernighan, which described C to the masses. Kernighan took care mostly of
the first part (explaining, examples, etc.), and Ritchie of the second part
(reference and interfacing with Unix).

This book was called "The C Programming Language". It is now known as K&R
because of it's authors (not because of the authors of the C language). Note
that there are two editions: first (K&R1) and second (K&R2).

The code given in the original reply was in K&R style, the style used by K.
and R. on the first edition of the book.

Then came ANSI C, a standardization of the language. K&R2 was published to
comply with the standard. ANSI C (and K&R2) used a new style in several
points of the language. One of the style changes was the modifcation of the
function declaration syntax.

Sorry, for the long post.. I got carried away..

Regards, sena...

-- 
sena@decoy.ath.cx, http://www.smux.net/~sena/
gpg fingerprint: F20B 12A8 A8F6 FD1F 9B1D BA62 C424 8E73 DD2E 47C8
SMUX - http://www.smux.net/