Programming language · 1969

B

Procedural programming language.

BCPLWritten in

1969First released

Bell LabsDeveloper

untypedTyping

BootstrapInfluence

What is B written in?

B uses a bootstrap chain from BCPL (documented).

Quick Facts

Designed by: Ken Thompson
Developer: Bell Labs
First released: 1969
Typing: untyped

About B

B is a procedural programming language. It is an untyped language that compiles ahead of time to native machine code. It supports imperative and procedural programming.

B first appeared in 1969 and was designed by Ken Thompson at Bell Labs.

How B is implemented

In the Language Lineage dataset, its toolchain was bootstrapped from BCPL.

B in the language family tree

B drew on ideas from BCPL and went on to influence C.

Sources: Wikipedia · Wikidata

Frequently Asked Questions

What language is B written in?

B is primarily implemented in BCPL.

What languages influenced B?

B was influenced by BCPL among others. See the influence section above for the full list.

Which languages did B influence?

B influenced C among others.

When was B first released?

B was first released in 1969. It was designed by Ken Thompson.

Evidence Sources

Discover More

What is B written in? What are programming languages written in? B in the language family tree Interactive programming language graph How B bootstraps its compiler Languages B influenced: C Languages that influenced B: BCPL

Embed this graph

Paste this iframe into any HTML page to show the B relationship graph.

<iframe src="https://www.languagelineage.org/embed?lang=b" width="100%" height="500" loading="lazy" style="border:0" title="B relationship graph"></iframe>

Please attribute the visualization to Language Lineage and link to the B source record. See the embed guide for parameters and sizing.

Spot something wrong?

Every fact on this page is meant to be checkable. If one is wrong, say so and it becomes a dataset change, not a patch to this page.

Explore B in Graph →