dmr@alice.UUCP (06/18/88)
Practically everything ok@quintus cites as proving that C does not descend from Algol 68 is true, yet there was influence, much of it so subtle that it is hard to recover even when I think hard. In particular, the union type (a late addition to C) does owe to A68, not in any details, but in the idea of having such a type at all. More deeply, the type structure in general and even, in some strange way, the declaration syntax (the type-constructor part) was inspired by A68. And yes, of course, "long". Mostly, of course, C is Thompsonized BCPL (that is, B) with types. You don't have to look too hard to find PL/1 and Fortran, either. Dennis Ritchie