Why has C prevailed over Pascal?

> Why has C prevailed over Pascal?

A combination of factors beyond those cited in the linked discussion:

1. C was closer to the machine, less abstract, at a time when abstraction was more expensive than it is now.

2. You could weave C and assembly together in the same program, developing under the same compiler, making it possible for an assembly-language programmer to migrate to C in small increments.

3. Pascal was strict when strictness cost more than it does now.

4. Pascal had much more overhead than C did, both in development and in operation, at a time when a typical machine had very little memory or storage space.

5. C had more documentation available, and more users to consult, than Pascal.

So overall one might say "momentum" was the reason.

I can remember in the early days at Apple (around 1980) loading Pascal into an Apple II using floppy disks -- three or more, as I recall, each read completely -- and thinking how Pascal had better be pretty wonderful to justify all that effort. And it wasn't.