csc (01/21/83)
I am trying to do some research on the "family tree" of dialects of
the C language. Since Kernighan & Ritchies book (The C Programming
Language) in 1978, the C language has undergone a number of changes.
Structure assignments and enumerated types apparently date back to
1978. I only learned about the 'void' type recently, and as yet don't
know when it was introduced, or which compilers support it. Has the
'official' definition of C been extended beyond this, within Bell Labs?
Are there any papers discussing the changes?
I did read a paper in January 1982 Sigplan Notices describing a 'class
preprocessor' designed at Bell Labs, which adds Smalltalk classes to C.
However, it seemed that this work still had the status of an experiment,
and had not been officially adapted.
So, my question is, what is the current state of C, and how did it get
where it is? Please send information, reminiscences, references to papers,
historical data, etc, and I will post a digest.
Also: I'm certain that a lot of relevant material has already been published
in net.lang.c; however, I have only read back to about Dec 20, 1982.
How can I get backissues?
Thanks, Doug Moen ...{decvax|utzoo}!watmath!csc