[TUHS] Any UNIX With No C In Userland?

[Larry McVoy]

On Sat, Mar 01, 2025 at 05:58:15PM -0800, Bakul Shah via TUHS wrote:
> On Feb 28, 2025, at 4:16???PM, segaloco via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
> > 
> > Given that anything that obeys the ABI and has assembler entries to the kernel
> > can request services, it seems to me it would be possible to stand up a
> > user-land without C being present.  Have any UNIXen ever done this after the
> > advent of C?
> 
> vinix is written in the V language and can have userland written in V as
> well but so far the compiler compiles to c (so requires a c compiler) so
> not sure it qualifies + its development seems to have stalled somewhat.
> 
> IIRC there is at least one v6 level (toy?) OS written in rust with a
> rust only userland. May be for anything non-toy you'd have to provide
> a C compatible API.
> 
> Personally I don't see much point in reimplementing a 50+ year old OS in
> a new language; at least do something new and innovative (with unix
> emulation for dusty decks) but ??\_(???)_/??

I took a look at the V language, not a fan.  But I'm a grumpy old C
programmer and I tend to hate languages that change the syntax for 
no good reason.

I would much prefer to see C evolved.  Not like C++ but just better C.
It dismays me that people feel like they need to make a mark with some
new "better" syntax.  C syntax is fine, it's well understood by a zillion
programmers.  So why not evolve that syntax to a better C?

We did that with https://www.little-lang.org/index.html which is a compiled
C like language.   There are a ton of extensions to C that just made sense
to me.  It never caught on but it still stands as an example of how you 
could take C syntax and extend it to be more useful.  Why people don't 
do that is a mystery to me.
-- 
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Larry McVoy           Retired to fishing          http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat