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> I beg to differ. C was a fairly obscure language until MS-DOS came out.

On the early days of DOS, what was used the most was IBM-BASIC (and GW-BASIC) for users, assembler for games like Alley Cat, IBM LOGO for teaching, some games were made on FIG-FORTH even

Then borland brought Turbo Pascal which was hugely popular together with MS QuickBasic.

Meanwhile, and we're at 1986-7, a good amount of software was already made for the Unices, in C. I don't think anyone was doing C for DOS back then. My grandpa -a PC nerd- had a huge (200+) collection of diskettes around that era, which now I own, there are all sorts of compilers for the above languages, plus Fortran, Clipper, etc; but no C compiler. Even though he owned the K&R book.

First time i saw use of C on the DOS world was with Borland Turbo C++.



There were probably 30 C compilers for the IBM PC. Turbo C didn't appear until 1987, it was quite a latecomer. C was immensely popular on the C before then.

Borland produced Turbo C not to introduce C to the PC, but because C was so dominant on that platform. After all, why would they have done that after being so successful with Turbo Pascal?


The Aug 1986 issue of Dr. Dobb's lists:

* Aztec C

* C86

* Datalight C (mine!)

* DeSmet C

* Eco-C88

* Hot C

* IBM C

* Lattice C

* C Prog Sys

* Let's C

* High C

* Microsoft C

* Mix X

* Toolworks C

* Whitesmiths C

* Wizard C

PC Tech Journal reviewed 8 C compilers for DOS in their Nov-Dec 1983 issue, though I don't have a copy of it.


The majority of them unknown or impossible to buy in the 1983's reality of Portugal and Spain, as I mention in another comment.




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