Editing Relational operator (section)

====B and C====
This uniform de facto standard among most programming languages was eventually changed, indirectly, by a minimalist compiled language named [[B (programming language)|B]]. Its sole intended application was as a vehicle for a first port of (a then very primitive) [[Unix]], but it also evolved into the very influential [[C (programming language)|C]] language.

B started off as a syntactically changed variant of the systems programming language [[BCPL]], a simplified (and typeless) version of [[CPL (programming language)|CPL]]. In what has been described as a "strip-down" process, the <code>and</code> and <code>or</code> operators of BCPL<ref>Used not only in ALGOL-like languages, but also in FORTRAN and BASIC</ref> were replaced with <code>&</code> and <code>|</code> (which would later become <code>&&</code> and <code>||</code>, respectively.<ref>As some programmers were confused by the dual meanings (bitwise operator, and logical connective) of these new symbols (according to [[Dennis Ritchie]]). Only the bitwise meaning of & and | were kept.</ref>). In the same process, the ALGOL style <code>:=</code> of BCPL was replaced by <code>=</code> in B. The reason for all this being unknown.<ref>Although [[Dennis Ritchie]] has suggested that this may have had to do with "economy of typing" as updates of variables may be more frequent than comparisons in certain types of programs</ref> As variable updates had no special syntax in B (such as <code>let</code> or similar) and were allowed in expressions, this non standard meaning of the equal sign meant that the traditional semantics of the equal sign now had to be associated with another symbol. [[Ken Thompson]] used the ad hoc <code>==</code> combination for this.

As a small type system was later introduced, B then became C. The popularity of this language along with its association with Unix, led to Java, C#, and many other languages following suit, syntactically, despite this needless conflict with the mathematical meaning of the equal sign.