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

[Will Senn via TUHS]

Ah, duly noted. I read it as old C, but not that old :).

Will

On 5/14/26 08:46, Clem Cole wrote:
> 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
>     >
>     >
>