[TUHS] What is this 1972 C/NB program?

[Clem Cole via TUHS]

Will. That was the original B/C syntax.  Remember that B, like BLISS has
only one data type: word. So pointers are not special.  I suspect this is
very early C, possibly nB given that it has a char type.


Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual

On Thu, May 14, 2026 at 9:22 AM Will Senn via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:

> it's looking for hyphens as previously explained, but here are a couple
> of notes:
>
> int nread 1;
>
> should probably be    int nread = 1;
>
> static ibuf;
>
> should probably be    static char *ibuf;
>
>      or
>
>      static int *ibuf;
>
> These look like bugs, but old c was quirky, so I wouldn't swear by it.
>
> Will
>
> On 5/13/26 20:57, Thalia Archibald via TUHS wrote:
> > This mysterious program is in the s1 tape, but has not yet been
> identified.
> > Does it look familiar?
> >
> https://github.com/DoctorWkt/unix-jun72/blob/master/src/cmd/unknown.c
> >
> > It looks like it processes line continuations. It filters files to only
> runs of
> > lines continued with hyphen with the adjoining whitespace stripped. Only
> letters
> > and hyphens are allowed in such lines.
> >      [a-zA-Z-]+(-\n[\t\n]*[a-zA-Z-]+)*
> >
> > But there's bugs, so the grammar is actually the following, where EOF is
> > included in the negated sets as NUL:
> >      ([a-zA-Z]|-[^\n])+(-\n[ \t\n]*[^ \t\n]([a-zA-Z]|-[^\n])*)*
> >
> > Could this be a sort of preprocessor? Perhaps for some sort of a
> configuration
> > language?
> >
> > It reads the list of named files, printing each filename with "%s:\n \n"
> before.
> > The space on an empty line is strange.
> >
> > It uses & and | for conditionals and is typed, characteristic of early C
> and NB.
> >
> > It uses this horrid indentation style, which doesn't match ken or dmr.
> > Do you recognize who? Example:
> >
> > while((b[++i] = get(ifile)) != 0)
> >          {if((b[i] >= 'a' & b[i] <= 'z') |
> >          (b[i] >= 'A' & b[i] <= 'Z'))
> >                  {c[j++] = b[i];
> >                  goto cont;
> >                  }
> >
> > I've taken some liberties to simplify it below. I changed it to operate
> on a
> > single file. And equivalently, I reformatted it, replaced an unnecessary
> buffer
> > with a single char, and simplified control flow. See the above link for
> the
> > original.
> >
> > char c[60];
> >
> > main(argc, argv)
> > int argc;
> > char *argv[];
> > {
> >          char b;
> >          int isw, j, k;
> >
> >          isw = j = 0;
> >          while((b = getchar()) != 0) {
> >                  if((b >= 'a' && b <= 'z') || (b >= 'A' && b <= 'Z')) {
> >                          c[j++] = b;
> >                          continue;
> >                  }
> >                  if(b == '-') {
> >                          c[j++] = b;
> >                          if((b = getchar()) != '\n') {
> >                                  c[j++] = b;
> >                                  continue;
> >                          }
> >                          if(j == 1) {
> >                                  isw = j = 0;
> >                                  continue;
> >                          }
> >                          isw = 1;
> >                          while(((b = getchar()) == ' ') || (b == '\t')
> || (b == '\n'))
> >                                  ;
> >                          c[j++] = b;
> >                          continue;
> >                  }
> >                  if(isw == 1) {
> >                          k = 0;
> >                          c[j++] = '\n';
> >                          while(k < j)
> >                                  putchar(c[k++]);
> >                  }
> >                  isw = j = 0;
> >          }
> > }
> >
> > Thalia
> >
> >
>