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According to Dennis Ritchie's 1993 paper The Development of the C Language:

Also during this period, the compiler was retargeted to other nearby machines, particularly the Honeywell 635 and IBM 360/370; because the language could not live in isolation, the prototypes for the modern libraries were developed. In particular, Lesk wrote a ‘portable I/O package’ [Lesk 72] that was later reworked to become the C ‘standard I/O’ routines.

The reference [Lesk 72] may be an error, since it is given in the references section as [Lesk 73]:

M. E. Lesk, ‘A Portable I/O Package,’ AT&T Bell Laboratories internal memorandum ca. 1973.

I cannot find any copy of this memorandum anywhere; given it was an "internal memorandum", I assume it is not publicly available (if it survives at all). But, I am wondering, in its absence, if there are any public sources on the details of Lesk's package, and how it differed from later <stdio.h>?

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    If nobody here turns up a copy, you might try asking Michael Lesk directly. His e-mail address is on his home page.
    – Psychonaut
    Commented Oct 23, 2022 at 8:03
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    The updated 1975 version of the memo is here: The Portable C Library
    – scruss
    Commented Apr 19, 2023 at 17:10
  • @scruss you should post that as an answer Commented May 12, 2023 at 2:35
  • @SimonKissane Clem Cole's answer is just as good, and came in before my comment
    – scruss
    Commented May 12, 2023 at 19:56
  • @scruss The 1975 version of the memo is more interesting (to me at least) because it includes all the details of the GCOS and OS/360 implementations. The one from the V6 Unix sources omits all that. Commented May 13, 2023 at 0:41

1 Answer 1

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Unless you are an old guy like me, you'll need to run this thru groff -ms unless you know how to decode troff 😄

Mike Lesk's Portable I/O Library

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