- Whitesmiths
Whitesmiths Ltd. was a
software company based inWestford, Massachusetts . It sold aUnix-like operating system called Idris, as well as the first commercial Ccompiler . The Whitesmiths compiler, written for thePDP-11 , was released in1977 or1978 and compiled a version of C similar to that accepted byVersion 6 Unix (Dennis Ritchie 's original C compiler). It was an entirely new implementation, borrowing no code from Unix. Today, it is mainly remembered for lending its name to a peculiar indentation style, originally used in the code examples which accompanied it.In 1983 Whitesmiths formed a technical and business alliance with France-based
COSMIC Software . At that time, Whitesmiths published 16-bit compilers for machines likePDP-11 while COSMIC published 8-bit compilers for Intel and Motorola CPUs. This technology alliance improved compilers for both market places. Whitesmiths was actively involved in developing the originalANSI C standard supplying several members to the standards committee and hosting some technical sessions. They were one of the first suppliers of anANSI C compliant compiler.The company's president from
1978 to1988 wasP. J. Plauger . Whitesmiths merged withIntermetrics in December 1988, leading to furtherM&A .External links
* [http://www.cosmic-software.com/ Official homepage] of Cosmic Software
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