1 Sep
2017
1 Sep
'17
1:36 a.m.
On Aug 31, 2017, at 10:49 AM, Doug McIlroy
<doug(a)cs.dartmouth.edu> wrote:
My point being that perhaps the success of Unix had more to do
with the success of C than anything else. And I believe Unix
success had more to with the set of s/w tools it came with
than C.
For most user programs either language would be been fine.
Given its evoltion C had the necessary features to implement
an OS kernel but I believe Pascal could've been easily (&
minimally) extended to something equivalent. Note that Per
Brinch Hansen & his students did write an OS (Solo) in
Concurrent Pascal[1].
Also note that C itself went through a few iterations while
Pascal was basically the same language that prof. Wirth
defined until 1985.
--bakul
[1] Solo was a university project + it lacked the greatest
strength of Unix (a set of s/w tools). So it stayed a uni
project. Concurrent Pascal was a significant extension over
sequential Pascal but PBH explained his rationale by way of
his excellent book on Operating System Design!
If Unix was written in Pascal I would've
happily continued using Pascal!
Amusing in the context of Brian's piece, which essentially says if Unix
could have been written in Pascal, then Pascal wouldn't have been Pascal.
doug\