Brilliant book. Copy saved. Thanks, Ralph. Simono On Fri, 2010-10-15 at 13:08 +0100, Ralph Corderoy wrote: > Hi Paul, > > > I did have a play with BCPL that it was developed from though. ... I > > think B was then developed into C, etc. > > Yes, BCPL was by Martin Richards at Cambridge University and was a > stripped-down version of CPL, the B meaning basic. That meant it was > easier to write a compiler for it, especially on small machines. There > was also a BCPL ROM for the Acorn BBC home computer, not surprisingly > since it also came from Cambridge. > > Ken Thompson, creator of Unix, stripped it down further, to B, when he > wanted an even smaller language. It wasn't compiled to machine code, > but threaded code. Dennis Ritchie took over from him, creating New B > and then C, and changing the compiler to produce machine code along the > way. > > A very good and popular book on writing compilers from my youth used > BCPL as the implementation language because, being simple and only > having one type, the machine word, the language got out of the way of > showing the compilation techniques. The author, Richard Bornat, has put > a version online now. The original book I have was produced in a > fixed-width font with underlining and over-printing for bold. :-) > > http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/staffpages/r_bornat/#compilerbook > > I can recall marvelling at how a C compiler could take source code and > produce machine code from it. I could write both but didn't know the > magic of how a compiler went from one to the other. Bornat's book > showed how to me and many others. > > Cheers, > Ralph. > > > -- > Next meeting: Crown Hotel, Blandford Forum, Tuesday 2010-11-02 20:00 > Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ > How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://goo.gl/4Xue
-- Next meeting: Crown Hotel, Blandford Forum, Tuesday 2010-11-02 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://goo.gl/4Xue
