EPISODE · Oct 19, 2024 · 36 MIN
The B Programming Language (vcfb24)
from Chaos Computer Club - archive feed · host Angelo Papenhoff
Everyone knows about C, but only few have seen its predecessor B. Unlike C, B was not compiled to machine code but to various incarnations of an interpreted code. Unfortunately, the original B compiler does not seem to have survived, but the interpreter, standard library and a few binaries have. With this it was possible to recreate a compiler – of course written in B itself – that is reasonably close to what it would have been around 1971. Because B is so minimal it is a perfect language to study how a simple compiler works. In the talk you will see what B is like, how it works, how it was reconstructed, and of course see it running under the first edition of UNIX. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ about this event: https://c3voc.de
What this episode covers
Everyone knows about C, but only few have seen its predecessor B. Unlike C, B was not compiled to machine code but to various incarnations of an interpreted code. Unfortunately, the original B compiler does not seem to have survived, but the interpreter, standard library and a few binaries have. With this it was possible to recreate a compiler – of course written in B itself – that is reasonably close to what it would have been around 1971. Because B is so minimal it is a perfect language to study how a simple compiler works. In the talk you will see what B is like, how it works, how it was reconstructed, and of course see it running under the first edition of UNIX. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ about this event: https://c3voc.de
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The B Programming Language (vcfb24)
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