The myth of the auto-increment operator

Computer History (I'm in that kind of mood today)
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A computer myth that will never die:


There is an ongoing myth that the auto-increment operator in C arose to take
advantage of the PDP-11 addressing modes. What brings this to mind is the new
compiler book by Keith Cooper & Linda Torczon, which repeats the story.


However, Dennis Ritchie says this isn't so -- that the "x++" notation was
introduced in B (not C), which was originally developed on a PDP-7. See his
article on the history of C at:


          http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/chist.html


It has lots of interesting tidbits.


--


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= Jeff Kenton Consulting and software development =
= http://home.comcast.net/~jeffrey.kenton =
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