Online Computer Dictionary

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Queried for: B  About B

Definition:
1. byte. 2. A systems language written by Ken Thompson in 1970 mostly for his own use under Unix on the PDP-11. B was later improved by Kerninghan(?) and Ritchie to produce C. B was used as the systems language on Honeywell's GCOS-3. B was, according to Ken, greatly influenced by BCPL, but the name B had nothing to do with BCPL. B was in fact a revision of an earlier language, bon, named after Ken Thompson's wife, Bonnie. ["The Programming Language B", S.C. Johnson & B.W. Kernighan, CS TR 8, Bell Labs (Jan 1973)]. [Features? Differences from C?] (1997-02-02) 3. A simple interactive programming language by Lambert Meertens and Steven Pemberton. B was the predecessor of ABC. ftp://ftp.uni-kl.de/pub/languages/B.tar.Z. ["Draft Proposal for the B Language", Lambert Meertens, CWI, Amsterdam, 1981]. 4. A specification language by Jean-Raymond Abrial of B Core UK, Magdalen Centre, Oxford Science Park, Oxford OX4 4GA. B is related to Z and supports development of C code from specifications. B has been used in major safety-critical system specifications in Europe, and is currently attracting increasing interest in industry. It has robust, commercially available tool support for specification, design, proof and code generation. E-mail: .