Editing Unix System Laboratories (section)

==C++ language work==
{{see also|C++#History}}
There was also a languages department at Unix System Laboratories,<!-- https://books.google.com/books?id=9yMQAQAAMAAJ Dr. Dobb's Journal of Software Tools ... is member of the languages department at Unix System Laboratories and is the editor of the Standard for the C++ Standardization committee. --> which was responsible for the [[C language]] compiler and development tools used to build Unix.<ref name="pr-uso"/>  Moreover, it was responsible for commercial sales related to the C++ language, including development tools such as the [[Cfront]] compiler that had come from AT&T.<ref name="d-and-e"/> 
Indeed, the paper describing one of the first implementations of automatic instantiation of [[Template (C++)|C++ templates]] in a C++ compiler had as lead author an engineer associated with Unix System Laboratories.<ref>{{cite journal | first1=Glen | last1=McCluskey | first2=Robert B. | last2=Murray | title=Template Instantiation For C++ | journal=SIGPLAN Notices | volume=27 | issue=12 | date=December 1992 | pages=47–56| doi=10.1145/142181.142195 | s2cid=27330199 | doi-access=free }}</ref><ref name="m-and-c"/>  And [[Margaret A. Ellis]], co-author with C++ creator [[Bjarne Stroustrup]] of ''The Annotated C++ Reference Manual'', an important publication in the history of the language, was a USL software engineer.<ref name="d-and-e"/>

[[Image:Office within the Unix System Laboratories building in Summit, New Jersey--March 1994.jpg|thumb|left|A software developer working in the Summit building]]

USL also continued the development of, and attempted to market, C++ Standard Components,
an early instance of a C++ software foundation library that supported [[Container (abstract data type)|container classes]] and various other [[computer science]]-based functionality such as [[finite-state machine]]s, [[Graph (abstract data type)|graph]]s, and [[regular expression]]s.<ref name="udk-sc"/><ref name="report"/>  The Standard Components originated in conjunction with early developments in the C++ language in Bell Labs and became widely used internally within AT&T,<ref name="d-and-e"/>  by one estimate being used in hundreds of projects.<ref>{{cite book <!-- | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AhI7BAAAQBAJ&pg=PA146 --> | first1=M. Afshar | last1=Alam | first2=Tendai | last2=Padenga | title=Application Software Reengineering | publisher=Pearson | location=Delhi | date=2010 | page=146}}</ref>
They represented an effort among early library writers there to design reusable code using C++ idioms.<ref name="m-and-c">{{cite book | first1=Martin D. | last1=Carroll | first2=Margaret A. | last2=Ellis | title=Designing and Coding Reusable C++ | publisher=Addison-Wesley | location=Reading, Massachusetts | date=1995 | pages=x, 231}}</ref>   Unlike its other offerings, which were sold to OEM vendors and resellers, here USL sold to end users.<ref name="report">{{cite news | title=Product Review: The USL C++ Standard Components Release 2 (end user package) | first=Bill | last=Leggett | magazine=C++ Report | date=June 1992 | pages=69–73}}</ref>  The initial release of USL C++ Standard Components to the general computing industry was labelled as Release 2.0 and occurred in 1991;<ref name="udk-hist"/> it suffered from an awkward mechanism to get around the lack of templates in the container classes.<ref name="report"/>  That was followed by Release 3.0, which added support for templates, in 1992.<ref name="udk-hist">{{cite web | url=http://osr600doc.sco.com/en/SDK_c++/_Product_History.html | title=Product History | publisher=The SCO Group | date=June 2, 2005 | access-date=April 28, 2018 | archive-date=September 10, 2018 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180910204656/http://osr600doc.sco.com/en/SDK_c++/_Product_History.html | url-status=live }}</ref>  <!-- USL C++ Standard Components Release 3.0 Programmer's Reference - could include cover of that C++ SC manual as fair use if I still have it somewhere -->

Some within USL believed that C++ Standard Components could become a language standard as well as a significant source of revenue,<ref name="d-and-e"/> but it had trouble gaining traction outside of AT&T.  Stroustrup would later describe these goals as "a misguided belief".<ref name="d-and-e">{{cite book | first=Bjarne | last=Stroustrup | title=The Design and Evolution of C++ | publisher=Addison-Wesley | location=Reading, Massachusetts | date=1994 | pages=124–125, 126–127, 184 | bibcode=1994dec..book.....S }}</ref><!-- see the HOPL II/III? paper if I have it ... looks like nothing in either -->  In any case, all such libraries were soon eclipsed by the radically different [[Standard Template Library]] (STL), which became the standardized foundation library for the C++ language.<ref>{{cite conference | contribution=Evolving a language in and for the real world: C++ 1991-2006 | first=Bjarne | last=Stroustrup |  title=Proceedings of the third ACM SIGPLAN conference on history of programming languages | date=June 2007 | publisher=ACM | pages=4-8–4-11    }}</ref>  As it happens, one of the Standard Components, array_alg, was designed by the creator of STL, [[Alex Stepanov]], and can be considered an early predecessor of STL.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://stepanovpapers.com/ | title=Alexander A. Stepanov | publisher=stepanovpapers.com | date=October 6, 2016 | access-date=December 15, 2017 | archive-date=December 1, 2017 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171201140114/http://stepanovpapers.com/ | url-status=live }} and {{cite web | url=http://osr600doc.sco.com/en/SDK_c++/_No_More_Array_Errors_Part_II_-_.html | title=No More Array Errors (Part II) - Array_alg(C++) | publisher=The SCO Group | date=June 2, 2005 | access-date=April 28, 2018 | archive-date=September 10, 2018 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180910204621/http://osr600doc.sco.com/en/SDK_c++/_No_More_Array_Errors_Part_II_-_.html | url-status=live }}</ref>