On Mon, Sep 18, 2017 at 12:10 PM, Lars Brinkhoff <lars(a)nocrew.org> wrote:
Nelson H. F. Beebe wrote:
kcc was written by Ken Harrenstien from scratch
Rewritten maybe? Some KCC source code files have the comment
"Original version (c) 1981 K. Chen"
which I take to mean referencing Kok Chen.
Kok Chen's work was the basis for the Greg Titis compiler. It wound up on a
bunch of DECUS tapes, but never seems to have taken off (Greg seems to
think as many as 20 copies existed in the wild). I heard from him off list.
He started with the kcc compiler, then rewrite the scanner, parser and
code-gen, leaving behind just the interfaces. Sadly, he lost all copies he
had in a flood in maybe 1988. He recommends the latter-day kcc as well as
being the best compiler to use if you want to have a more purist
experience. gcc on tops-20 just feels wrong, even to him (he's spent the
years since then doing various compiler things for Cray).
Anyway, just another bit of trivia for this wonderful thread.
Warner