January 12, 2010

What if K&R had a co-author

C is the most used programming language these days and the definitive book for it was written by Brian W Kernighan & Dennis M Ritchie. What if they had help -- from Howard Phelps Lovecraft?
The C Programming Language
Brian W Kernighan & Dennis M Ritchie & HP Lovecraft

4.10 Recursion
C functions may be used recursively; that is, a function may call itself either directly or indirectly. Uninquiring souls may take this as just another peculiarity of those C folk, of whose ways their neighbours speak little to outsiders but much among themselves.

Keener news-followers, however, wondered at the events of the winter of 1927-28, the abnormally large number of calls placed upon the stack, the swiftness with which that list was sorted, the disturbing lack of heap allocation throughout the proceedings, and the secrecy surrounding the affair.

People in the nearby towns had talked about C for nearly a century, and nothing new could be wilder or more hideous than what they had whispered and hinted years before. Many things had taught them secrecy, and there was now no need to exert pressure on them.

But at last I am going to defy the ban on speech about this thing. It was I who fled frantically out of C Recursion in the early morning hours of July 16, 1927, and whose frightened appeals for action brought on the whole reported episode.

I never heard of C Recursion till the day before I saw it for the first and� so far� last time. They told me the steam train was the thing to take to Arkham; and it was only at the station ticket-office, when I demurred at the high fare, that I learned about C Recursion. The shrewd-faced agent, whose speech shewed him to be no local man, made a suggestion that none of my other informants had offered.

"You could take that old bus, I suppose," he said with a certain hesitation. "It runs through C Recursion, so the people don't like it. I never seen more'n two or three people on it� nobody but them C folks."
Brilliant -- I hope that Bob Hobbs writes more. Posted by DaveH at January 12, 2010 10:42 PM
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