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 <cu...@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 <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 > > >
