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BCPL Dead

BCPL
KindProgramming language
Appeared1967
StatusDead
CreatorMartin Richards / Cambridge
FamilyBCPL

Richards' portable systems language — the first C-family syntax with curly braces; Ken Thompson distilled it into B, and B became C.

Descended from CPL
Succeeded by B
Created by Martin Richards
Descendants B
Predecessors CPL

Martin Richards's BCPL (1967) was CPL stripped to a bootstrap compiler — one type (the machine word), portable across architectures, and the language Multics was partly written in.\n\nKen Thompson's B stripped it further; Ritchie's C added types. The CPL→BCPL→B→C chain is the systems-language royal line.

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