Is there any support for the article's assertion that C uses ‘=’ for assignment (and ‘==’ for equality) “to save memory”? dmr simply described it as “a matter of taste”¹ and hinted that he was simply used to typing ‘=’ for assignment². [Edit: And the compilers didn't keep source in memory, anyway.]

¹http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/chist.html (also published in HOPL-II) ²History of Programming Languages II, Transcript of C Presentation, p692

(Nice to see Rust trying to bring progress to the C niche, BTW.)