[TUHS] Question: stdio - Who invented and ...

[Clem Cole]

On Mon, Mar 23, 2020 at 10:24 AM Jaap Akkerhuis <jaapna at xs4all.nl> wrote:

> Yes, "Typesetter C" was to accommodate the C Version of troff written
> by Ossana and I checked the source, it doesn't use stdio.
>
Interesting.   The compiler described in K&R was a v6 compiler -- we had it
at CMU before we had V7.  I thought we got it from the Typesetter C
release.  But Ted may have brought even before that.   Brian K. might have
also.  He was Brian Ried's thesis committee and was coming to CMU
reasonably often in 77/78 timeframe - when Reid was writing Scribe and
Brian ditroff.  I'm pretty sure we got some stuff via that channel too, as
I was the person moving some of that around campus and its how I first met
Brian.

I admit that I might have some void in my memory, but I do remember part of
this pretty well.  Because CS had the 11/40E with writable microcode (they
had been developed for C.mmp). The CS PDP-11's running UNIX (IUS and SUS)
had CSV/CRET instructions (as well as a couple of others for BLISS and
support capabilities, IIRC). Someone (Paul Rubin I think), had modified the
original V6 compiler to generate CSV/CRET.  That meant that binaries from
CS would not run on the 11/34's which most of the UNIX box on campus had by
then become.  Ted and I were in EE and there was a small battle as to which
systems were more current.  Since Ted worked officially for USG, he had a
direct line to much of there stuff.    Ted had xerographic proofs of the
book when it was being reviewed BTW.   When CMU got the new Ritchie
compiler and I had the task of rippling it out to all the sites in EE,
Mellon Institute, et al.  CS did not pick it up originally because it did
not have the CSAV/CRET changes.   CMU did not get V7 until late winter
'78/early spring '79 around the time I was leaving.

So, we definitely had a Ritchie based K&R compiler with stdio.  I had
thought that come to us with Typesetter C, but it sounds like it had a
different path.   FWIW: that would actually be the compiler sources I
started with at Tektronix 6 months later, when I started to retarget it for
what would become the 68000 (it was not yet released and was an
experimental chip), as I had brought the CMU UNIX systems with me.
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