[Simh] BLISS and C

[Paul Koning]

> On Jan 29, 2018, at 12:05 PM, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
> 
> ...
> One can argue, why did Ken not just build something more like BCPL instead of B?  I can not say, maybe the brevity of { } from PL/1 was more attractive than the Algol BEGIN/END style? 

PL/I has begin/end as ALGOL does.  I don't know where { } came from, but it isn't from PL/I.  What perhaps did come from PL/I is ; as terminator rather than separator.

I was looking at ALGOL syntax again recently, and noticed something interesting: the ALGOL-60 procedure declaration syntax is nearly identical to the K&R style function declaration syntax in C.  That is, this style:

	foo (a,b);
	int a, b;
	{ /* ... */ }

looks just like what ALGOL-60 uses.

	paul