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From: mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton)
Newsgroups: net.mail
Subject: Re: Domains
Message-ID: <2544@cbosgd.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 14-Sep-86 00:30:02 EDT
Article-I.D.: cbosgd.2544
Posted: Sun Sep 14 00:30:02 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 14-Sep-86 07:33:51 EDT
References: <895@gilbbs.UUCP> <522@meccts.UUCP> <901@gilbbs.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Columbus, Oh
Lines: 43

In article <901@gilbbs.UUCP> mc68020@gilbbs.UUCP (Thomas J Keller) writes:
>   *HOWEVER*:  the use of long identifiers (in both C code AND preprocessor
>code), and other relatively recent additions to C makes it EXTREMELY
>difficult for many of us to actually USE that software.

If there are long identifiers in use in smail or pathalias or some other
key piece of software, I'd appreciate it if you'd point out where.  I've
compiled sendmail, pathalias, and smail on a UNIX PC running 3.0, which
doesn't have flexnames, and it works fine.  This suggests to me that
there aren't any names used that aren't unique in the first 7 or 8 chars,
as appropriate.  If you have a counterexample, please let us know.
If you have a compiler that can't handle 10 character names that ARE
unique in the first 6 chars, it isn't a C compiler, it's a C subset.

>   The new mailers make heavy use of neat goodies like enumerated data 
>types, which many of us pcc based users can't deal with.

Enums are in PCC and have been a part of the C language since V7 and
UNIX 2.0.  As far as I know, this means that enums are present in every
version of UNIX in use today.  (V6 and PWB don't count, they don't
support UUCP without serious hacking.)  There are restrictions on how
enums can be used in some compilers, but smail stays within those
restrictions.

Again, if you're having problems, it would be helpful if you'd point
out the specific piece of code causing the problem, and tell what
version of UNIX on what hardware has trouble with it.  I suppose it
is possible that somebody has a braindamaged C compiler, since each
UNIX port needs a new C compiler, but if you don't have enums, you
don't conform to V7, System III, System V, Xenix, or 4BSD, all of
which are supposed to have enums.

Nonetheless, if the enums are causing a problem, and it's not just
one locally braindamaged orphan system, let us know, it is possible
to rewrite it to use #defines instead.

In my experience, the only compilers out there today that don't support
enums are those going by the K&R C book as the definition of the language,
rather than the UNIX manual.  As far as I know, all such compilers are
for operating systems other than UNIX.  I'd love to be corrected if I'm
wrong.

	Mark