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Technology Stocks : All About Sun Microsystems -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kashish King who wrote (8303)	3/13/1998 6:03:00 AM
From: Chung Yang	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

I think we are a bit lost here. C is simply a programming language. The lowest common denominator for a machine are binaries, which may or may not include operating system calls. But you can write the binaries and/or the operating system with any language that allows you to compile into native machine calls. It is true that C was used quite often because it was the popular language at the time when UNIX became a popular operating system. But UNIX operating systems came before C and it had to be written in assembly code; it was called Multics(sp?) in those days. Eventually when C became mature enough, people began to write the operating system in C. They even wrote new C compilers in C! Both FORTRAN and COBOL pre-dates C by about a decade or more. Scripting languages calls the operating system directly. They need not necessary be C calls. - Chung >>> Wiseowl, I agree with both statements but they are not related. The shell scripts and other higher level "languages" access services in the operating system through a C language interface. It's sort of a tier structure with C right near the bottom. Think of C as the UNIX Programing Language (UPL) and you will have the connection to the Java Programing Language (JPL, hmmm....) and Java the Operating System and/or environment. See, Windows was an "environment" long before it ever made it to Operating System status and high level languages like COBOL and FORTRAN either used Window's C language interface or their assembly language interface. <<<