How did C look like before I was born?

Question

Here is the question, How did C (K&R C) look like? The question is about the first ten or twenty years of C's life?

I know, well I heard them from a prof in my uni, that C didn't have the standard libraries that we get with ANSI C today. They used to write IO routines in wrapped assembly! The second thing is that K&R book, is one the best books ever for a programmer to read, This is what my prof told us :)

I would like to know more about good ol' C. For example, what major difference you know about it compared to ANSI C, or how did C change programmers mind about programming?

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Just for record, I am asking this question after reading mainly these two papers:

• Evolving a language in and for the real world: C++ 1991-2006

• A History of C++: 1979-1991

They are about C++, I know! thats why I wanna know more about C, because these two papers are about how C++ was born out of C. I am now asking about how it looked before that. Thanks Lazarus for pointing out to 1st edition of K&R, but I am still keen to know more about C from SO gurus ;)

Answer 1

Well, for a start, there was none of that function prototype rubbish. main() was declared thus:

/* int */ main(c,v)
int c;
char *v[];
{
    /* Do something here. */
}

And there was none of that fancy double-slash comments either. Nor enumerations. Real men used #define.

Aah, brings a tear to my eyes, remembering the good old days :-)