On 2018-01-29 23:48, Timothe Litt wrote:
On 29-Jan-18 17:45, Dave Wade wrote:
-----Original Message-----
From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Bob
Eager
Sent: 29 January 2018 22:08
To: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: Re: [Simh] BLISS and C
On Mon, 29 Jan 2018 12:05:01 -0500
Clem Cole <cl...@ccc.com> wrote:
One can argue, why did Ken not just build something more like BCPL
instead of B? I can not say, maybe the brevity of { } from PL/1 was
more attractive than the Algol BEGIN/END style?
BCPL was, in any case, using $( $) and (later) { }. It never used BEGIN/END.
The "B" compiler I used on the Honeywell L6000/L66 used { }.
And the major drawback of BCPL (which I love) was that it was word
oriented. Most machine architectures were not (OK, PDP-10...) One had to
use contortions, and a special % operator, to access bytes efficiently.
"B" is similar, characters were accessed by functions rather than a special
operator, but you can, I think use a combination of shifts and logical operators....
... those familiar with BCPL or C who have not encountered B may find the
manual here interesting...
https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/bref.html
it would be nice to find a working compiler for a word based machine...
I seem to remember that there was a BCPL for TOPS-10 in the DECUS library.
I have a BCPL compiler for RSX, which also came from DECUS. Now, the
PDP-11 is probably not a word based machine in the sense Dave meant.
However, I also think that Dave was asking for a B compiler, and not a
BCPL compiler...
Johnny
--
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
|| on a psychedelic trip
email: b...@softjar.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
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