Nb
    n 1: a soft grey ductile metallic element used in alloys; occurs
         in niobite; formerly called columbium [syn: niobium,
         Nb, atomic number 41]
    2: a Latin phrase (or its abbreviation) used to indicate that
       special attention should be paid to something; "the margins
       of his book were generously supplied with pencilled NBs"
       [syn: nota bene, NB, N.B.]

	

	NB
       Nota bene (slang, Usenet, IRC)

	

	C
NB

    A programming language designed by Dennis Ritchie
   at AT&T Bell Labs ca. 1972 for systems programming on the
   PDP-11 and immediately used to reimplement Unix.

   It was called "C" because many features derived from an
   earlier compiler named "B".  In fact, C was briefly named
   "NB".  B was itself strongly influenced by BCPL.  Before
   Bjarne Stroustrup settled the question by designing C++,
   there was a humorous debate over whether C's successor should
   be named "D" or "P" (following B and C in "BCPL").

   C is terse, low-level and permissive.  It has a macro
   preprocessor, cpp.

   Partly due to its distribution with Unix, C became immensely
   popular outside Bell Labs after about 1980 and is now the
   dominant language in systems and microcomputer applications
   programming.  It has grown popular due to its simplicity,
   efficiency, and flexibility.  C programs are often easily
   adapted to new environments.

   C is often described, with a mixture of fondness and disdain,
   as "a language that combines all the elegance and power of
   assembly language with all the readability and
   maintainability of assembly language".

   Ritchie's original C, known as K&R C after Kernighan and
   Ritchie's book, has been standardised (and simultaneously
   modified) as ANSI C.

   See also ACCU, ae, c68, c386, C-Interp, cxref,
   dbx, dsp56k-gcc, dsp56165-gcc, gc, GCT, GNU C,
   GNU superoptimiser, Harvest C, malloc, mpl,
   Pthreads, ups.

   [Jargon File]

   (1996-06-01)