19 Feb
2022
19 Feb
'22
10:03 p.m.
On Sat, 19 Feb 2022, Will Senn wrote:
I have been poring through the v7 source code lately,
and came across an
oddity I would like to know more about. Specifically, in sh. The code for sh
is c, but it makes *extensive* use of of macros, for example:
<snip>
I can read the resultant code through the lens of my
experience coding c, but
I'm curious why the macros and how this came about? In v6, the sh source is
straight up c. Is there a story behind it worth knowing?
Apparently Bourne was heavily into ALGOL, and used those macros to make C
into something more familiar.
At least, that's what I concluded by reading her Wikipedia page as well as
the code.
-uso.