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From: barmar@mit-eddie.UUCP (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re: long names in 'C' programs
Message-ID: <4337@mit-eddie.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 24-May-85 00:29:02 EDT
Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.4337
Posted: Fri May 24 00:29:02 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 25-May-85 06:35:11 EDT
References: <476@aicchi.UUCP> <668@mcvax.UUCP> <964@peora.UUCP>
Reply-To: barmar@mit-eddie.UUCP (Barry Margolin)
Organization: MIT, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 36

In article <964@peora.UUCP> jer@peora.UUCP (J. Eric Roskos) writes:
>If the new features are truly worthwhile, they will, in time,
>find their way into all compilers.  This is a hard problem to deal with,
>but it is simply the reality of practical programming in the real world.

But if I (or my school, or my company) choose to purchase a featureful
compiler, and I end up paying more than others in order to get a
compiler that meets the full standard, why should I let these features
go to waste because not everyone has a correctly working compiler?  If I
pay for a complete implementation of the language I shouldn't have to
wait for everyone else to catch up before I can use all the features{

Of course, the issue is whether you are writing programs for yourself
(or your organization) or for sharing with as many others as possible.
If the latter you must be careful and aim for the common denominator.
If you don't care about complete portability, then you can use the
features that you paid extra for.


There is another issue in variable name usage that is probably less
controversial (although I'm sure there are people who will flame back at
me about their right to use this "feature").  If a compiler allows long
variable names, but only cares about the first N characters, it is
possible to type the same variable name in different ways, e.g
"variable_name" and "variable_nm" on compilers where the first ten
characters are significant are considered the same variable.  If a
program refers to the variable by both names and there is an attempt to
port it to a system with a twelve-significant-character compiler then
the one variable will become two variables.  I can think of no good
reason for using two different names for the same variable, but I have
read about cases like this.  I suspect that they were mostly accidental,
i.e. the programmer forgot which variable name form he was using.
-- 
    Barry Margolin
    ARPA: barmar@MIT-Multics
    UUCP: ..!genrad!mit-eddie!barmar