On Mon, Sep 18, 2017 at 12:10 PM, Lars Brinkhoff <lars@nocrew.org> wrote:
Nelson H. F. Beebe wrote:
> kcc was written by Ken Harrenstien from scratch

Rewritten maybe?  Some KCC source code files have the comment

    "Original version (c) 1981 K. Chen"

which I take to mean referencing Kok Chen.

Kok Chen's work was the basis for the Greg Titis compiler. It wound up on a bunch of DECUS tapes, but never seems to have taken off (Greg seems to think as many as 20 copies existed in the wild). I heard from him off list. He started with the kcc compiler, then rewrite the scanner, parser and code-gen, leaving behind just the interfaces. Sadly, he lost all copies he had in a flood in maybe 1988. He recommends the latter-day kcc as well as being the best compiler to use if you want to have a more purist experience. gcc on tops-20 just feels wrong, even to him (he's spent the years since then doing various compiler things for Cray).

Anyway, just another bit of trivia for this wonderful thread.

Warner