[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


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  Kay Parker       
  kayparker at mailite.com

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