Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!husc6!bu-cs!m2c!ulowell!page
From: page@ulowell.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: A shared library (mostly) in C
Message-ID: <1358@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu>
Date: Mon, 8-Jun-87 15:10:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: ulowell.1358
Posted: Mon Jun  8 15:10:59 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 10-Jun-87 06:59:58 EDT
References: <10113@decwrl.DEC.COM>
Reply-To: page@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu (Bob Page)
Organization: University of Lowell
Lines: 31

Uh oh ..

Now that we can write our own C libraries, how do we handle name conflicts?
If I have (say) an "iff.library" that has an IFF read routine called
"iffread" and you have a library for your application called "myapp.library"
that also has a routine called "iffread", which one gets used, mine or yours,
assuming you call OpenLibrary() on both libraries?

This is not as trivial as it sounds.  I think the reason everybody doesn't
have shared C libraries is because C-A didn't document how do to them
well, and I think THAT is because they didn't know how to handle conflicts
in the name space.

A better example is something like push(), that could occur in two
libraries and do totally different things .. one that operates on
a stack, the other that plays with window arrangement.

This Open-Ended-ness of the Amiga operating system can be a can of worms.
Witness potential problems with SetFunction (SetVector?  Can never remember)
or hot-key programs that all look for META-CTRL-ESC to do their thing.
I'm not saying I want to get rid of the functionality - I just wish there
were a way to arbitrate it.  JimM has a package called "Commodities Exchange"
that attempts to rectify the hot-keys problems; alas, it is not part of
Exec now, and won't be universally accepted until it *is* part of it.

Anyway, how do we avoid colliding function names in run-time libraries?
I mean besides appending a "unique" string to the function name...

..Bob
-- 
Bob Page, U of Lowell CS Dept.   page@ulowell.{uucp,edu,csnet}