Editing PL/C (section)

== Use and distribution ==
[[Image:CS 202 PL C programming assignment 1974.jpg|thumb|upright=0.8|right|Assignment using PL/C, from a Cornell second-semester programming class in 1974]]

As soon as it was ready, PL/C was distributed beyond Cornell itself,<ref name="plcs"/> in the form of [[magnetic-tape data storage|magnetic tapes]] sent to interested parties.<ref name="cornell-history-computing"/>  For instance, PL/C was first used at the [[University of Michigan]] in the Fall 1970 semester.<ref name="mts-jan71"/>  The PL/C project was considered a research effort, not a commercial endeavor; however, those installations who wanted to use PL/C were asked to pay a "[[research grant]]" in exchange.<ref name="cw-mar76">{{cite news | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Gt-ykciyhRAC&pg=PA15 | title=PL/C Gains Interactive Version | author-first=Don | author-last=Leavitt | newspaper=Computerworld | date=March 1, 1976 | page=15 }}</ref>  This amount was $1,800 as of 1972,<ref name="nmsu-review"/> and had risen to $2,400 by 1976.<ref name="cw-mar76"/>  Cornell's further development work on PL/C was partly funded by these payments.<ref name="cornell-history-computing"/>

PL/C quickly became the most popular of any education version of PL/I;<ref name="cornell_cs_timeline">{{cite web | url=https://www.cs.cornell.edu/information/timeline | title=Cornell Department of Computer Science: 50 Years of Innovation | publisher=Cornell Bowers CIS | access-date=September 15, 2022}}</ref> in 1970–71 alone, it was sent to 100 different institutions, resulting in 60 of them purchasing it.<ref name="cornell-history-computing"/>  By 1976, there were more than 200 sites around the world that had installed PL/C.<ref name="plcs"/><ref name="cdsun-111578"/>  Eventually, over 250 universities had used it.<ref name="announ-gsm">{{cite book | url=https://ecommons.cornell.edu/handle/1813/38067 | title=Cornell University Announcements: Graduate School of Management, 1984–85 | publisher=Cornell University | date=August 10, 1984| page=22 }}</ref>   There was also some interest in PL/C from non-academic entities, thus resulting in PL/C adding support for some business-oriented features such as PICTURE variables.<ref name="cw-mar76"/> 

A survey conducted by [[New Mexico State University]] in 1972 looked at various possibilities for teaching languages and implementations and concluded regarding PL/C:
"PL/C seems praiseworthy. Its purchase price ($1,800) is probably its biggest drawback. It has all of the built-in functions PL/I has, is much faster in both compilation and execution, and runs in 86K of a 100K partition leaving 14K for the student program. Its only real possible deficiency for student programs is its lack of record I/O capability. The PL/C compiler not only diagnoses errors, but often corrects them properly. It inserts missing parentheses and semicolons and shows both the invalid statement and the corrected statement. If PL/C finds a statement completely unrecognizable it deletes it and attempts execution anyway."<ref name="nmsu-review">{{cite journal | author-first=J. Mack | author-last=Adams | author2-first=William H. | author2-last=Inmon | author3-first= Jim | author3-last=Shirley | title=PL/I in the computer science curriculum | journal=ACM SIGCSE Bulletin | volume=4 | number=1 | date=March 1972 | pages= 116–126 | doi=10.1145/873684.873713 | s2cid=32179236 }}</ref>

Some universities, including [[Washington State University]], found success in teaching an introductory class that used PL/C first and then Fortran (using WATFIV) second, which was found to be a beneficial order in terms of student learning.<ref>{{cite conference | author-first=Glen E. | author-last=Newton | author2-first=J. Denbigh | author2-last=Starkey | year= 1976 | contribution= Teaching both PL/I and Fortran to Beginners | title= Proceedings of the sixth SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education (SIGCSE '76) | publisher=Association for Computing Machinery | pages= 106–107 | doi=10.1145/800144.804769 | doi-access=free }}</ref>  Indeed, Cornell at one point restructured their introductory course offering to allow students the option to do that.<ref name="sigcse-cs100">{{cite conference | author-first=Richard W. | author-last=Conway | year=1974 | contribution=Introductory instruction in programming | title= Proceedings of the fourth SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education (SIGCSE '74) | publisher= Association for Computing Machinery | pages= 6–10 | doi=10.1145/800183.810430 }}</ref>

PL/C release numbers were to some extent synchronized to releases of the IBM PL/I F compiler, so that for instance Release 4 of PL/C was intended to match Version 4 of the IBM F compiler in terms of upward compatibility.<ref name="mts-jan71"/>  In terms of some instances of PL/C distributions, Release 4 was available by January 1971;<ref name="mts-jan71"/> Release 6 by August 1971;<ref name="PLCConwayWilcox" /><!--see footnotes--> Release 6.5 by November 1973;<ref>See program listing image.</ref> Release 7.1 in March 1975;<ref name="mts-mar75">{{cite news | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6hxVAAAAMAAJ&pg=RA2-PA12| title=New Version of PL/C | work=Computing Center Newsletter | publisher=University of Michigan | date=March 12, 1975 | page=2 }}</ref> and Release 7.5 in March 1976.<ref name="cw-mar76"/>  The last version of PL/C appears to have been Release 7.6, put out in 1977.<ref>See for example {{cite book | title=Concepts of Programming Languages | author-first=Robert W. | author-last=Sebesta | publisher=Addison-Wesley | year=2010 | page=739 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Z1Y_AQAAIAAJ&q=%22PL/C%22+%22release+7.6%22 | location= | isbn=9780136073475 | edition=Ninth }}<!-- haven't found a 7.7 or anything later in web searches --></ref>
{{clear}}