Whence cdecl?

[Richard W.M. Jones]

Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> I tried to contact the original authors, and indeed got quite far along 
> and got permissions from several, but unfortunately a key original 
> author could not be contacted.  If you want I can go back over my notes 
> and dig out the names again.

This is what Tony Hansen said to me back in January 2007 when I 
contacted him (it was a private email so I have removed parts):

> Yes, I'm one of the early contributors to cdecl.
> 
> These are the contributors I see mentioned in my copy of the source:
> 
> 	Graham Ross, once tektronix!tekmdp!grahamr, now Context, Inc.
>  *	originally written
> 
> 	David Wolverton, david_wolverton<@>att.com
>  *      conversion to ANSI C
>  *      added some bug fixes from D. Wolverton
>  *      add typedef support
>  *      remove noalias
> 
> 	Merlyn LeRoy, merlyn<@>rose3.rosemount.com
>  *      added extern, register, static
>  *      added links to explain, cast, declare
>  *      separately developed ANSI C support
> 
> 	Alexander Dupuy, dupuy<@>smarts.com, dupuy<@>cs.columbia.edu
>  *      modified type crosscheck to warn about void/signed in ritchie,
>  *	    preansi
>  *      #undef yywrap so that flex can be used
>  *      better semantic checking on use of C++ references
>  *      support const/volatile function member pointers
> 
> 	Unknown
>  *      modified to provide hints for unsupported types
>  *      added argument lists for functions
>  *      added 'explain cast' grammar
>  *      added #ifdef for 'create program' feature
> 
> 	Myself
>  *      added function prototypes
>  *      added C++ declarations
>  *      made type combination checking table driven
>  *      added checks for void variable combinations
>  *      made 'create program' feature a runtime option
>  *      added file parsing as well as just stdin
>  *      added help message at beginning
>  *      added prompts when on a TTY or in interactive mode
>  *      added getopt() usage
>  *      added -a, -r, -p, -c, -d, -D, -V, -i and -+ options
>  *      delinted
>  *      added #defines for those without getopt or void
>  *      added 'set options' command
>  *      added 'quit/exit' command
>  *      added synonyms
>  *      merged versions from LeRoy
>  *      added tmpfile() support
>  *      allow more parts to be missing during explanations
>  *      added some bug fixes from D. Wolverton
>  *      add typedef support
>  *      remove noalias
>  *      fixed some memory leak problems pointed out
>  *          by the "purify" program
>  *      add support for ...
>  *      now a command line argument may have more text than just the
>  *	    keyword

[and he goes on to say that he is happy to relicense his changes under a 
free license].

Graham Ross is the original author and the man whom we need to contact 
most of all.  I'm pretty confident that with his go-ahead we could 
relicense the whole thing, since the other contributions are just minor 
derived works of the original.

The last place I found Graham working was thinkshare.com, however that 
email now bounces.

Rich.

-- 
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