ian (12/30/82)
Steve Serocki asked how "c" came to be called "c". Dave Levenson's article which mentioned BCPL was on the right track. C derives from B, and was briefly called `NB'. The BSTJ paper on `The C Programming Language' has a section entitled `The Linguistic History of C' which states: `The C language in use today is the product of several years of evolution. Many of its most important ideas stem from the considerably older, but still quite vital, language BCPL developed by Martin Richards. The influence of BCPL on C proceeded indirectly through the language B, which was written by Ken Thompson in 1970 for the first UNIX system on the PDP-11' (i.e., the PDP-7 UNIX didn't have C, it used Thompson's B language). This appears on page 1992 of the article cited below. (I've omitted footnote references from the article; you should read the original for more info). %A Dennis M. Ritchie %A S. C. Johnson %A M. E. Lesk %A B. W. Kernighan %T The C Programming Language %J The Bell System Technical Journal %V 57 %N 6 %D July-August 1978 Hope this helps, Ian Darwin, Toronto