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From: Kaz Kylheku <643-408-1753@kylheku.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Recursion, Yo
Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2024 15:35:26 -0000 (UTC)
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On 2024-04-20, Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> wrote:
> bart <bc@freeuk.com> writes:
>
>> On 19/04/2024 16:26, Tim Rentsch wrote:
> ...
>>> ...                                      Certainly C has some
>>> similarities to Algol 68, but I wouldn't say C and Algol 68
>>> are similar languages, only that they have a few similarities.
>>
>> I can't see any connection between Algol68 and C; I'm surprised at people
>> who say they do.
>
> "Connection" is vague, but Dennis Ritchie has written about the
> influence of Algol 68 on C.

I was looking at both Algols recently; they have a go to statement
with local statement labels, very similar to C.

>> C was put together together as a systems language to do a job, not to
>> implemement some esoteric concept of a language that few could understand.
>>
>> I understood it was based on languages like B and BCPL.
>
> BCPL had assignment statements but B followed Algol 68 and made
> assignment an expression operator (along with the +=, -= etc versions).
> This, of course, fed directly into C.

Algol 60 included a selection operator, suggested by John MacCarthy
of Lisp. That's likely how C ended up with the A ? B : C syntax.

That's actually funny because MacCarthy first invented a three-operand
IF operator, which he simulated via a function in Fortran. He used
that to simplify his chess program and other programs. (This account
is given in his History of Lisp article). His Fortran XIF, being
a function, didn't have the evaluation semantics he wanted such that
XIF(A, B, C) would evaluate only one of A and B. He somehow evolved this
three-way if into the multi-branch conditional which he then favored; it
became the Lisp cond with the M-expression surface syntax, and that
being similar to what he proposed for Algol.  Eventually Lisp people
also went full circle, providing a two/three argument if operator or
macro, alongside cond.

-- 
TXR Programming Language: http://nongnu.org/txr
Cygnal: Cygwin Native Application Library: http://kylheku.com/cygnal
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