[TUHS] Unix stories, Stephen Bourne and IF-FI in C code
Kay Parker
kayparker at mailite.com
Mon Jan 9 07:54:52 AEST 2017
Thanks Walter!
I already read about Algol like C in the Bourne area and now know what
it means. I also read elsewhere that it was a act of freedom when the
Bell Lab boys freed finally themselves from the Bourne 'Algol'
influence.
On Sun, Jan 8, 2017, at 12:37 PM, Walter F.J. Mueller wrote:
> There was thread 'Unix stories' were Stephen Bourne played role.
>
> Here another story about Stephen Bourne. He worked first on Algol 68,
> than joined the Unix team at Bell labs and wrote sh and adb. It's well
> known that the if-fi and case-esac notation from Algol came to shell
> syntax this way.
>
> Maybe less know is that Bourne tried as hard as he could to make the
> C code of sh and adb look like Algol, with the help of preprocessor
> macros. I stumbled across this when I looked into the 2.11BSD code
> base some time ago. Look at
>
> http://www.retro11.de/ouxr/211bsd/usr/src/bin/sh/main.c.html
> http://www.retro11.de/ouxr/211bsd/usr/src/bin/adb/main.c.html
>
> to enjoy C with an Algol-look. The definitions are in
>
> http://www.retro11.de/ouxr/211bsd/usr/src/bin/sh/mac.h.html
> http://www.retro11.de/ouxr/211bsd/usr/src/bin/adb/defs.h.html
>
>
> Cheers, Walter
--
Kay Parker
kayparker at mailite.com
--
http://www.fastmail.com - Send your email first class
More information about the TUHS
mailing list