Selected Technical Reports

The intent is to make our history available. Some of the reports appearing are superseded by published papers or books; some of those not appearing are just buried beneath the pile of things that everyone hopes to index and make available but doesn't get around to, or are on far-away disks or moldering backup tapes, or on paper only.

The collection here includes both files formatted as compressed PostScript with the suffix .ps.gz and files formatted as PDF with the suffix .pdf. To read the compressed PostScript file you need a version of GNU gunzip and a PostScript printer or a screen-display utility for PostScript. On Unix-style systems these are relatively common. They won't read directly into many of today's browsers. To read the PDF versions you need a PDF viewer or a browser that can render PDF files.

An accounting of the whole collection is listed as a plain text file, in bib format. If a particular report listed there looks especially interesting, it might be worth while to search in Netlib or in the bibliographies of individual Bell Labs authors. Some papers there are long gone, but some are available (perhaps in a more perfected form) from their authors, or by sending mail to cstr-request@research.bell-labs.com.

• N. L. Schryer, CSTR #33, A User's Guide to DODES, a Double Precision Ordinary Differential Equation Solver, Bell Labs, August 1975.
• J. W. Hunt and M. D. McIlroy, CSTR #41, An Algorithm for Differential File Comparison, Bell Labs, July 1976.
• N. L. Schryer, CSTR #52, A Tutorial on Galerkin's Method, using B-splines, for Solving Differential Equations, Bell Labs, September 1976.
• N. L. Schryer, CSTR #53, Numerical Solution of Time-Varying Partial Differential Equations in One Space Variable, Bell Labs, April 1977.
• J. F. Ossanna, CSTR #54, Nroff/Troff User's Manual, Bell Labs, 1976. Revised by Brian Kernighan, 1992.
• N. L. Schryer, CSTR #89, A Test of Computer's Floating-Point Arithmetic Unit, Bell Labs, February 1981. Also in Sources and Development of Mathematical Software, ed. W. Cowell, Prentice-Hall.
• B. W. Kernighan, CSTR #97, A Typesetter-Independent TROFF, Bell Labs, 1981, revised March 1982.
• B. W. Kernighan, CSTR #100 Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language, Bell Labs, July 1981. [A perennial favorite, also collected elsewhere.]
• C. J. Van Wyk, CSTR #103, IDEAL User's Manual, Bell Labs, December 1981. [Some interesting ideas about using constraints to describe picture-drawing].
• Linda Kaufman, CSTR #106. A Package of Subroutines for Solving Systems of Linear Equations, Bell Labs, November 1982. Divided into several independent files: 106a, 106b, 106c, 106d, 106e, 106f.
• Jon L. Bentley and Brian W. Kernighan, CSTR #114, GRAP -- A Language for Typesetting Graphs (Tutorial and User Manual), Bell Labs, August 1984. [One of the many interesting `little languages' invented by these authors.]
• Brian W. Kernighan, CSTR #116, PIC -- A Graphics Language for Typesetting (Revised User Manual). Bell Labs, December 1984. [PIC is another `little language,' one maintaining somewhat more currency than GRAP, and sometimes as an intermediate representation.]
• Robert T. Morris, CSTR #117, A Weakness in the 4.2BSD Unix TCP/IP Software, Bell Labs, February 1985. [Well before the Internet Worm, Robert was interested in exploring the security aspects of networked systems.]
• Steven Tjiang, CSTR #120, Twig Reference Manual, Bell Labs, January 1986.
• J. L. Bentley, L. W. Jelinski, and B. W. Kernighan, CSTR #122, CHEM -- A Program for Typesetting Chemical Structure Diagrams, Computers and Chemistry, Bell Labs, April 1986. [Another very neat `little language.']
• Andrew Koenig, CSTR #123, C Traps and Pitfalls, Bell Labs, July 1986. [In expanded form, this became Koenig's book, with the same name.]
• A. V. Aho and R. Sethi, CSTR #127, Maintaining Cross References in Manuscripts, Bell Labs, September 1986.
• J.L. Bentley and B.W. Kernighan, CSTR #128, Tools for Printing Indexes, Bell Labs, October 1986
• J. L. Bentley and B. W. Kernighan, CSTR #132, A System for Algorithm Animation (Tutorial and User Manual), Bell Labs, January 1987. [Instrument your programs with graphics.]
• R. Fourer, D. M. Gay, and B. W. Kernighan, CSTR #133, AMPL: A Mathematical Programming Language. Bell Labs, January 1987, revised June 1989. [The same authors published a book on AMPL, describing the system more fully; see also the AMPL home page.
• L. C. Kaufman and N. L. Schryer, CSTR #135, TTGR - a Package for Solving Partial Differential Equations in Two Space Variables, Bell Labs, June 1985.
• D. M. Gay, CSTR #136, Pictures of Karmarkar's Linear Programming Algorithm, Bell Labs, 1987.
• Jon L. Bentley, CSTR #142, DFORMAT - A Program for Typesetting Data Formats, Bell Labs, April 1988.
• Rob Pike, CSTR #143, Newsqueak: A Language for Communicating with Mice, Bell Labs, March 1989. [a precursor of Alef and Limbo.]
• Bill Cheswick, CSTR #145, A Permuted Index for TeX and LaTeX, Bell Labs, July 1989, revised February 1990.
• John D. Hobby, CSTR #148, Generating Automatically Tuned Bitmaps from Outlines, Bell Labs, February 1990.
• S. I. Feldman, David M. Gay, Mark W. Maimone, and N. L. Schryer, CSTR #149, A Fortran-to-C Converter Bell Labs, May 1990. [This describes the well-used f2c; see also its netlib index file for more information.]
• Gary J. Murakami and Ravi Sethi, CSTR #150, Terminal Call Processing in Esterel, Bell Labs, June 1990.
• David M. Gay, CSTR #153 (PDF), Usage Summary For Selected Optimization Routines, Bell Labs, October 1990
• Linda Kaufman, CSTR #154, TTGU - A Package for Solving Time Varying Partial Differential Equations on a Union of Rectangles, Bell Labs, December 1990.
• M. Douglas McIlroy, CSTR #155, There Is No Royal Road to Programs: A Trilogy on Raster Ellipses and Programming Methodology, Bell Labs, March 1990. [Anything by McIlroy is worth reading.]
• Gerard J. Holzmann, CSTR #157, Tutorial: Design and Validation of Protocols Bell Labs, May 1991.
• Rob Pike, Dave Presotto, Ken Thompson, Howard Trickey, Tom Duff, and Gerard Holzmann, CSTR #158, Plan 9: The Early Papers, Bell Labs, July 1991. These papers are mostly also available at the main Plan 9 site, but are also collected here in several files: 158a, 158b, 158c, 158d, 158e, 158f, 158g, 158h.
• Alfred V. Aho and David Lee, CSTR #159, Efficient Algorithms for Constructing Testing Sets, Covering Paths and Minimum Flows, Bell Labs, July 1991.
• Bjarne Stroustrup, CSTR #160, What is "Object-Oriented Programming"? (1991 revised version), Bell Labs, October 1991.
• Bjarne Stroustrup, CSTR #161, Sixteen Ways to Stack a Cat, Bell Labs, October 1991.
• John D. Hobby, CSTR #162, A User's Manual for MetaPost, Bell Labs, April 1992.
• M. Douglas McIlroy and J. A. Reeds, CSTR #163, The IX Multilevel Secure Operating System, Bell Labs, January 1992. It comes in several pieces: 163a, 163b, 163c, 163d, 163e, 163f, 163g, 163h, 163i. [A very interesting experiment in adding Orange-book style security facilities to a research Unix system.]
• John D. Hobby, CSTR #164, Drawing Graphs with MetaPost, Bell Labs.