🚀 go-pugleaf

phils@tekigm (phil straub) says:
> I can't stand it any more! All this talk about BCPL, and the only thing you
> find in the Amiga literature is references to bits and pieces about the
> tip of the iceberg indicating the BCPL roots of AmigaDOS. Three questions:
> 
> 1. Why was so much of AmigaDOS written in BCPL?

    AmigaDos was written by MetaComco, a british software house.  BCPL was
developed in britain (the "c" stands for "Cambridge").  BCPL isn't the worst
language i've ever seen; i'd prefer it to Cobol or Basic or Pascal.  many
of the concepts we take for granted in C were pioneered in BCPL.
    BCPL isn't solely a british dialect.  it was used extensively at
Xerox Parc about 10 years ago, for operating system R&D.

> 2. How does one go about programming in BCPL on the Amiga.
> If it is with some stuff the developers got, but we ordinary users don't
> have access to, is there any plan to make a BCPL programming package
> available to the general user?

    all the developers i know did _not_ get a BCPL compiler.  i'm not even
sure the folks at c-a have one for use in-house.  MetaComco has compilers
for sale for the ST and the sinclair QL (i think), and promises to have
one for the amiga RSN.  the price will be around $150.  (look for their
ads in Byte, etc).

> 3. Where do you find some reference material on BCPL, since it's not one of
> the current "in" languages?

    look for "BCPL The language and its Compiler", by Martin Richards
and Colin Whitby-Strevens, Cambridge University Press, LC#77-91098,
ISBN#0-521-28681-6.  i got my copy in 1982, so it's not quite ancient
history yet.

    now that i've said all that, you can probably just forget most of it.
BCPL doesn't provide any compelling advantage over C and assembler, so
there's not much reason to want to write programs with it.  buying the
book might be a good idea, if you're interested in hacking on the internals
of AmigaDos.

	wayne hamilton
	U of Il and US Army Corps of Engineers CERL
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