[TUHS] Software written in B

[Sebastien F4GRX]

Hello,

You have sent me a lot of valuable information about all of this 
software environment, some of which I had already found, but most is new 
for me. It was extremely interesting to read.

In particular I had seen the GCOS documentation, but did not consider 
deeply because they seem to describe a much improved and extended B 
language.

I am able to contact Alan Cox (aka EtchedPixels) via Mastodon, I will 
ask him about AberMUD.

Thank you Phil Budne for the PDP-7 listings, it's amazing to see that 
these two are even older since they use $( )$ instead of braces for 
compound statements.

And the linotron saga is absolutely fantastic!

Thank you everyone!

Sebastien


Le 07/06/2023 à 12:14, Sebastien F4GRX a écrit :
> Hello everyone,
>
> this is my first post on this list.
>
>
> After looking at the archives for this mailing list, I have seen that 
> the B language has been discussed several times already.
>
> After viewing Ken Thompson's interview by Brian Kernighan at VCF East 
> 2019, I became interested in the B language, as it seemed 
> full-featured for system programming, close to C, and simple enough to 
> write a parser for it without a code generation tool.
>
> So for fun and self-education, I am now writing a (or yet another) B 
> compiler, in C, after reading Jack Crenshaw's "Let's build a compiler" 
> documentation ( https://compilers.iecc.com/crenshaw/ )
>
> Here it is: https://git.sr.ht/~f4grx/bpars
>
> It is now starting to generate code for the 68hc11 8-bit platform. It 
> can also generate C code.
>
>
> I have written some test programs, found some B examples, but I 
> thought it would be great to use my compiler with actual B software.
>
> Of course, B was a "transition" language, that did not have a 
> continued use as soon as it evolved into C. so if any software 
> remains, it will be quite hard to find.
>
> And here is my question, is any of you aware of original B source code 
> archives? or are in touch with people that would know?
>
>
> In particular, I read on this document written by Dennis Ritchie: 
> https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/chist.html
>
> > After the TMG version of B was working, Thompson rewrote B in itself 
> (a bootstrapping step).
>
>
> I have also read that the YACC tool was initially written in B.
>
> There might be other historical B sources that I am not aware of.
>
>
> Do you know if any of this code has survived to this day? Where could 
> I find more information about this?
>
>
> Thank you very much,
>
> Sebastien Lorquet (F4GRX)
>