B 1. {byte}. 2. A systems language written by {Ken Thompson} in 1970 mostly for his own use under {Unix} on the {PDP-11}. B was later improved by Kerninghan(?) and Ritchie to produce {C}. B was used as the systems language on {Honeywell}'s {GCOS-3}. B was, according to Ken, greatly influenced by {BCPL}, but the name B had nothing to do with BCPL. B was in fact a revision of an earlier language, {bon}, named after Ken Thompson's wife, Bonnie. ["The Programming Language B", S.C. Johnson & B.W. Kernighan, CS TR 8, Bell Labs (Jan 1973)]. [Features? Differences from C?] (1997-02-02) 3. A simple interactive programming language by Lambert Meertens and Steven Pemberton. B was the predecessor of {ABC}. {(ftp://ftp.uni-kl.de/pub/languages/B.tar.Z)}. ["Draft Proposal for the B Language", Lambert Meertens, CWI, Amsterdam, 1981]. 4. A specification language by Jean-Raymond Abrial of {B Core UK}, Magdalen Centre, Oxford Science Park, Oxford OX4 4GA. B is related to {Z} and supports development of {C} code from specifications. B has been used in major {safety-critical system} specifications in Europe, and is currently attracting increasing interest in industry. It has robust, commercially available tool support for specification, design, proof and code generation. E-mail: . (1995-04-24)

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