[TUHS] Fwd: [multicians] History of C (with Multics reference)

[John Gilmore]

> Remember the story that Ken Thompson had written a language called "Bon"
> which was one of the forerunners of "B" which then led to "new B" and then
> to "C"?
> 
> I just found Ken Thompson's "Bon Users Manual" dated Feb 1, 1969, as told
> to M. D. McIlroy and R. Morris
> in Jerry Saltzer's files online at MIT.
> http://people.csail.mit.edu/saltzer/Multics/MHP-Saltzer-060508/filedrawers/180.btl-misc/Scan%204.PDF

There was clearly a lot of cross-fertilization between early APL systems
and Bon.  (APL was the first computer language I dug deeply into.)  Some
of the common elements are the interactive execution environment,
untyped variables, and automatic application of builtin functions (like
+) across all elements of arrays.

	John