Does C depend on ASCII?

[jlw at ariel.UUCP]

>Well, I don't know how dependent Unix really is on ASCII, but the folks
>at Amdahl probably thought it was dependent enough that they use ASCII,
>even though the underlying IBM-370 architecture is geared towards
>EBCDIC.
>-- 
>			Barry Margolin
>			ARPA: barmar at MIT-Multics
>			UUCP: ..!genrad!mit-eddie!barmar

This response should really be in net.arch, but I don't
agree that the IBM machine is really geared toward EBCDIC.
What is EBCDIC are the line printers, the card punches
and readers, and terminals, or, in other words, the
peripherals.  If you could get your C compiler typed in in
ASCII and compiled, then the IBM compare instruction
works just fine on ASCII.  Its all a big conspiracy
and a long chain of source text bootstrapping EBCDIC
along.



					Joseph L. Wood, III
					AT&T Information Systems
					Laboratories, Holmdel
					(201) 834-3759
					ariel!jlw