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Ken Thompson worked with [[BCPL]] on the [[Multics]] project, so when he started working on a new operating system called [[Unix]], he was inspired by that language in creating his own new programming language for use in that project, which he called '''B''' (apparently after the first letter of the predecessor language). While BCPL was already designed to be efficient in resource use, Thompson slimmed down B even more, so it would work in the very low-resource small computers he was targeting. B had only one data type, the 'word', which could represent a number or an [[ASCII]] character. | Ken Thompson worked with [[BCPL]] on the [[Multics]] project, so when he started working on a new operating system called [[Unix]], he was inspired by that language in creating his own new programming language for use in that project, which he called '''B''' (apparently after the first letter of the predecessor language). While BCPL was already designed to be efficient in resource use, Thompson slimmed down B even more, so it would work in the very low-resource small computers he was targeting. B had only one data type, the 'word', which could represent a number or an [[ASCII]] character. | ||
Revision as of 23:16, 8 July 2014
Ken Thompson worked with BCPL on the Multics project, so when he started working on a new operating system called Unix, he was inspired by that language in creating his own new programming language for use in that project, which he called B (apparently after the first letter of the predecessor language). While BCPL was already designed to be efficient in resource use, Thompson slimmed down B even more, so it would work in the very low-resource small computers he was targeting. B had only one data type, the 'word', which could represent a number or an ASCII character.
The syntax was greatly changed from BCPL, and includes much that would look at least vaguely familiar to modern programmers used to C and its descendants. As B was revised and expanded during the development of Unix, eventually it had acquired sufficient new functionality to deserve a new name, and this is when C was born.
