Editing C (programming language) (section)

==== New B and first C release ====
In 1971 Ritchie  started to improve B, to use the features of the more-powerful PDP-11.  A significant addition was a character data type.  He called this ''New B'' (NB).<ref name=Ars />  Thompson started to use NB to write the [[Research Unix|Unix]] kernel, and his requirements shaped the direction of the language development.<ref name="Ars" /><ref name="unixport" />  Through to 1972, richer types were added to the NB language: NB had arrays of <code>int</code> and <code>char</code>. Pointers, the ability to generate pointers to other types, arrays of all types, and types to be returned from functions were all also added. Arrays within expressions became pointers. A new compiler was written, and the language was renamed C.<ref name=sigplan />

The C compiler and some utilities made with it were included in [[Version 2 Unix]], which is also known as [[Research Unix]].<ref name="QtqTh">{{cite tech report |first=M. D. |last=McIlroy |author-link=Doug McIlroy |year=1987 |url=http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/reader.pdf |title=A Research Unix reader: annotated excerpts from the Programmer's Manual, 1971–1986 |series=CSTR |number=139 |institution=Bell Labs |format=PDF |page=10 |access-date=February 1, 2015 |archive-date=November 11, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171111151817/http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/reader.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref>