Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!ittvax!sii!mem
From: mem@sii.UUCP (Mark Mallett)
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re: Identifier significance challenge
Message-ID: <349@sii.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 9-Dec-83 02:28:24 EST
Article-I.D.: sii.349
Posted: Fri Dec  9 02:28:24 1983
Date-Received: Sun, 11-Dec-83 00:47:40 EST
Lines: 27

b
Once upon a time, in the middle ages, I worked with a compiler on a
TOPS-10 system which supported arbitrarily long names and yet had to
reduce these names to 6 characters apiece for the TOPS-10 linker.  It
made its reductions (as I recall) by making use of the fact that
people tend to punctuate long names; it selected particular characters
from each syllable and strung them together in some predictable way.
Unfortunately I don't remember what its rules were, but if anybody
wants to they could try to look it up (see below).  A symbol such as

	MARKS_MAGIC_NUMBER

might turn into

	MSMCNR

I never saw it get confused; I don't know what it would do if it did.

Second part:  I wonder if anybody has ever heard of the above-mentioned
compiler.  It compiled a subset of PL/I, was written in LISP sometime
around the late 1960s to early 1970s, and was called PL/E (PL/I for
Eastman's Exec).  It was written, I think, at Applied Logic Corp which
used to be in NJ.  I rather liked it; I wish that the people I 
resurrected it for hadn't lost it.

Mark E. Mallett
decvax!sii!mem