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... -- [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://www.smux.net/~sena/ gpg fingerprint: F20B 12A8 A8F6 FD1F 9B1D BA62 C424 8E73 DD2E 47C8 SMUX - http://www.smux.net/
