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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!seismo!rlgvax!cvl!elsie!ado
From: ado@elsie.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re: Identifier significance CHALLENGE - (nf)
Message-ID: <163@elsie.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 19-Dec-83 09:46:51 EST
Article-I.D.: elsie.163
Posted: Mon Dec 19 09:46:51 1983
Date-Received: Wed, 21-Dec-83 01:12:18 EST
References: <13@haddock.UUCP>
Organization: NIH-LCM, Bethesda, MD
Lines: 18

In particular, regarding--
	In the recently announced System V.2, flexnames are supported.  The
	past is, finally, behind us on this issue.

Well, maybe.  As I recall, though, the UNIX (Bell Labs trademark) gurus have a
history of abandoning support for machines they no longer feel like supporting--
like the PDP 11/40 when Version 7 was originally released.  This has typically
been done to "enhance portability"; how an operating system that can't run on
systems it used to run on is "more portable" than its predecessor is beyond me.

And of course there are folks using C compilers other than ones supplied by
Berkeley or Bell; given that "flexible names" aren't "required" in "The C
Programming Language," such compilers may lack support for them.

I think the challenges of "historic" dialects of C are still with us.
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