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 <d...@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 >
