Radford Neal wrote:
>
> Finally, I doubt very much that the "C" language stands for "computer".
> What would it's predecessor language, called "B", have stood for?
>
> Radford Neal
Believe it or not, "Basic". And the "C", for "Combined". (In my
search,
I also found alternatives "Bon" or those who might know, but in no case as
anybody's favorite theory.)
In the beginning there was CPL, "Combined Programming Language",
developed at Cambridge (UK) and the University of London. Hence the nickname
"Cambridge Plus London". This begat BCPL,
"Basic CPL", which (according to the abstract of the 1967 BCPL reference
manual) was
derived from CPL "by removing features that make compilation difficult,
namely type and mode matching rules...".
BCPL begat B; according to a reference manual for the latter, B differs
from its parent by being "syntactically rich in expressions and
syntactically poor in statements." Its name *probably* derives from "BCPL",
but possibly from "Bon", another early language believed to have been named
after its inventor's Ken Thompson's wife Bonnie, or possibly for a religion
called "Bon".
And B begat C; there seems to be consensus that this was named for "the
successor of B", but as C++ hadn't been invented yet, the multiple
inheritance problem had not been well understood, so that there is some
debate as to whethet the successor operator was inherited from the string
"BCPL" or from the alphabet. Thus, there was (Jargon File, other sources)
debate as to whether the next heir ought to be "D" or "P", which Stroustrup
sidestepped by using "C++".
I hope this has in no way lessened the confusion <grin>
-Robet Dawson
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