[TUHS] Hypothetical: Could MULTICS have been written in C, if available?

[Greg A. Woods via TUHS]

At Sat, 23 May 2026 19:02:43 +1000, steve jenkin via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
Subject: [TUHS] Hypothetical: Could MULTICS have been written in C, if available?
>

Regarding the question in your Subject line:

Well of course it could have, though some minor extensions may have
helped.

There was, in the end, a C compiler and runtime for Multics.

> 	could something like C have improved MULTICS or helped
> 	it's success in the marketplace?

I think early on PL/1 was still acceptable to the marketplace.  The
problem was more the Honeywell hardware wasn't widely accepted (as much
as say IBM hardware was, obviously, or even DEC hardware).

In the end-days of Multics, when Unix was gaining steam, a C
re-implementation may have helped, but of course it would also have had
to be written for, and/or portable to, more modern CPUs in order for it
to go anywhere at all.

I think it would be possible to write a Multics-like system for the
Intel 80386, (i.e. IA-32) though such a system would have some
constraints due to the limitations of the 386.  I feel sad that the
support for segmentation was dropped from the amd64 architecture.

Since I'm enamoured with the idea of files just being (virtual) memory
locations and getting rid of the sucking/blowing-through-a-straw
read/write API for files, I've written some half-baked thoughts on
writing a "modern" multics-like system:

	http://www.robohack.ca/~woods/multics.txt

See also:

	http://www.robohack.ca/~woods/C.txt

--
					Greg A. Woods <gwoods at acm.org>

Kelowna, BC     +1 250 762-7675           RoboHack <woods at robohack.ca>
Planix, Inc. <woods at planix.com>     Avoncote Farms <woods at avoncote.ca>
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