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From: chris@umcp-cs.UUCP (Chris Torek)
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Subject: Re: What is the origin of the prepended underscore?
Message-ID: <1495@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 5-Sep-85 22:37:07 EDT
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.1495
Posted: Thu Sep  5 22:37:07 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 7-Sep-85 06:06:24 EDT
References: <347@tekcbi.UUCP>
Distribution: net
Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD
Lines: 13

>Why is an underscore commonly prepended to symbols generated by most C
>compilers?

The answer is so that variables like "r3" don't conflict with
registers like "r3", and so forth.  However, while it is no longer
important now that we have flexnames, I would like to take this
opportunity to wonder why the _ was not *ap*pended to external
symbols, giving one eight significant characters between .o files
instead of seven.
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 4251)
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