Whitesmiths

Template:Short description Template:More citations needed {{#invoke:Infobox|infobox}}Template:Template otherTemplate:Main other{{#invoke:Check for clobbered parameters|check|nested=1|template=Infobox company|cat=Template:Main other|name; company_name|logo; company_logo|logo_alt; alt|trade_name; trading_name|former_names; former_name|type; company_type|predecessors; predecessor|successors; successor|foundation; founded|founders; founder|defunct; dissolved|hq_location; location|hq_location_city; location_city|hq_location_country; location_country|num_locations; locations|areas_served; area_served|net_income; profit|net_income_year; profit_year|owners; owner |homepage; website }}{{#invoke:Check for unknown parameters|check|unknown=Template:Main other|preview=Page using Template:Infobox company with unknown parameter "_VALUE_" | ignoreblank=y | alt | area_served | areas_served | assets | assets_year | aum | brands | company_logo | company_name | company_type | defunct | dissolved | divisions | embed | equity | equity_year | fate | footnotes | former_name | former_names | foundation | founded | founder | founders | genre | homepage | hq_location | hq_location_city | hq_location_country | incorporated | image | image_alt | image_caption | image_size | image_upright | income_year | industry | ISIN | key_people | location | location_city | location_country | locations | logo | logo_alt | logo_caption | logo_class | logo_size | logo_upright | members | members_year | module | name | native_name | native_name_lang | net_income | net_income_year | num_employees | num_employees_year | num_locations | num_locations_year | operating_income | owner | owners | parent | predecessor | predecessors | production | production_year | products | profit | profit_year | rating | ratio | revenue | revenue_year | romanized_name | services | subsid | successor | successors | traded_as | trade_name | trading_name | type | website| qid | fetchwikidata | suppressfields | noicon | nocat | demo | categories }} Whitesmiths Ltd. was a software company founded in New York City by P. J. Plauger, Mark Krieger and Gabriel Pham,<ref name="fiedler198007">Template:Cite news</ref> and last located in Westford, Massachusetts. It sold a Unix-like operating system called Idris, as well as the first commercial C compiler, Whitesmiths C.

The Whitesmiths compiler, first written for the PDP-11, was released in 1978 and compiled a version of C similar to that accepted by Version 6 Unix (Dennis Ritchie's original C compiler). It was an entirely new implementation, borrowing no code from Unix. Today, it is mainly remembered for lending its name to a particular indentation style, originally used in the code examples which accompanied it. Whitesmith's first customer for their C compiler was Fischer & Porter, a process control company then located in Warminster, Pennsylvania. Besides PDP-11, the compiler had code generators for Intel 8080/Zilog Z80, Motorola MC68000, and VAX-11, and it was commonly used as a cross compiler. Whitesmiths also developed a Pascal front-end for the compiler, that emitted C-language code for input to the C compiler.

By 1983 Whitesmiths was one of several vendors of Unix-like operating systems.<ref name="fiedler198310">Template:Cite news</ref> That year Whitesmiths formed a technical and business alliance with France-based COSMIC Software. At that time, Whitesmiths published 16-bit compilers for machines like PDP-11 while COSMIC published 8-bit compilers for Intel and Motorola CPUs. This technology alliance improved compilers for both markets. Whitesmiths was actively involved in developing the original ANSI C standard supplying several members to the standards committee and hosting some technical sessions. They were one of the first suppliers of an ANSI C compliant compiler.

The company's president from 1978 to 1988 was P. J. Plauger. Whitesmiths merged with Intermetrics in December 1988, leading to further mergers and acquisitions.

External links

• Whitesmiths Ltd. C Programmers' Manual
• Official homepage of Cosmic Software