16 Jul
2021
16 Jul
'21
10:05 a.m.
Clem Cole wrote:
The 'second' C compiler was a PDP-10 and
Honeywell (36-bit) target
Alan Synder did for his MIT Thesis. It was originally targeted to ITS
for the PDP-10, but it ran on Tops-20 also. My >>memory<< is he used
a 7-bit Character, ala SAIL, with 5 chars stored in a word with a bit
leftover.
On ITS it only ever stored characters as full 36-bit words! So sizeof
char == 1 == sizeof int. This is allowed per the C standard. (Maybe it
was updated somewhere else, I dunno.)
KCC does support 6/7/8/9 bits per character. I think 9 is the default,
or else things like memcpy doesn't work.
I believe that C compiler Nelson is talking about I
believe is
actually Synder's that Jay either ported from ITS or WAITS.
I think it's a different compiler based on pcc. But I also think code
was moved between various PDP-10 C compilers and libraries, so it's
sometimes hard to tell one from another.
There was also "Sargasso C", but I don't know much about that one.
Maybe its claim to fame is as the original implementation language for
the VT100 test program vttest still in use today.
There was even an attempt to port GCC, and maybe it's still in use today
somewhere around the Seattle area.