Portable C Compiler

Portable C Compiler
Original author(s)	Stephen C. Johnson
Developer(s)	AT&T Bell Laboratories
Initial release	1979
Stable release	1.1.0 / December 10, 2014
Written in	C
Operating system	Unix and Unix-like
Type	C Compiler
License	BSD License
Website	web.archive.org/web/20231212090621/http://pcc.ludd.ltu.se/

The Portable C Compiler (also known as pcc or sometimes pccm - portable C compiler machine) is an early compiler for the C programming language written by Stephen C. Johnson of Bell Labs in the mid-1970s,^[1] based in part on ideas proposed by Alan Snyder in 1973,^[2]^[3] and "distributed as the C compiler by Bell Labs... with the blessing of Dennis Ritchie."^[4]

Being one of the first compilers that could easily be adapted to output code for different computer architectures, the compiler had a long life span. It debuted in Seventh Edition Unix and shipped with BSD Unix until the release of 4.4BSD in 1994, when it was replaced by the GNU C Compiler. It was very influential in its day, so much so that at the beginning of the 1980s, the majority of C compilers were based on it.^[5] Anders Magnusson and Peter A Jonsson restarted development of pcc in 2007, rewriting it extensively to support the C99 standard.^[6]

^ Johnson, S.C. (1978). "A portable compiler: theory and practice". Proceedings of the 5th ACM SIGACT-SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages. Tucson, Arizona.: 97–104. doi:10.1145/512760.512771. S2CID 14390804.
^ Snyder, A. (1975). "A Portable Compiler for the Language C". Master's Thesis. MIT, Cambridge, Mass. Archived from the original on 2006-09-05. Retrieved 2006-07-19.
^ Johnson, S.C. (1981). A Tour Through the Portable C Compiler. Unix Programmer's Manual, 7th edition, Volume 2. Holt, Rinehart and Winston. ISBN 0-03-061743-X.
^ Cite error: The named reference stroustrup was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ Ritchie, Dennis M. (1993). "The development of the C language". The second ACM SIGPLAN conference on History of programming languages. Cambridge, Massachusetts. pp. 201–208. Retrieved 2008-12-30. At the start of the decade, nearly every compiler was based on Johnson's pcc; by 1985 there were many independently-produced compiler products.
^ "pcc history". pcc - portable c compiler. 2010-06-21. Retrieved 2012-06-26.

[1] Johnson, S.C. (1978). "A portable compiler: theory and practice". Proceedings of the 5th ACM SIGACT-SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages. Tucson, Arizona.: 97–104. doi:10.1145/512760.512771. S2CID 14390804.

[2] Snyder, A. (1975). "A Portable Compiler for the Language C". Master's Thesis. MIT, Cambridge, Mass. Archived from the original on 2006-09-05. Retrieved 2006-07-19.

[3] Johnson, S.C. (1981). A Tour Through the Portable C Compiler. Unix Programmer's Manual, 7th edition, Volume 2. Holt, Rinehart and Winston. ISBN 0-03-061743-X.

[stroustrup-4] Cite error: The named reference stroustrup was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

[5] Ritchie, Dennis M. (1993). "The development of the C language". The second ACM SIGPLAN conference on History of programming languages. Cambridge, Massachusetts. pp. 201–208. Retrieved 2008-12-30. At the start of the decade, nearly every compiler was based on Johnson's pcc; by 1985 there were many independently-produced compiler products.

[pcc-history-6] "pcc history". pcc - portable c compiler. 2010-06-21. Retrieved 2012-06-26.

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