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From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: MAJOR ANSI C FLAW (my opinion, of course)
Message-ID: <8753@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 11-Oct-87 18:41:19 EDT
Article-I.D.: utzoo.8753
Posted: Sun Oct 11 18:41:19 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 11-Oct-87 18:41:19 EDT
References: <1132@gilsys.UUCP>, <1246@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 21
Keywords: external names, length, bogosity to the max

> ... Consider 8 significant characters to be a
> reasonable limit.  Even that's taking things a bit too far, considering
> that for $61 I can get a largely-ANSI-conformant C compiler on my
> MS-DOS machine, complete with linker...

Oh goodie.  Will it also link object modules from XYZ Inc.'s Fortran, not
to mention all those binary-only libraries from ABC Co.?  Bear in mind
that a whole lot of C users are not basement hackers, who can afford to
throw out their existing software to upgrade their programming environment.

Also note that MS/DOS is not a fair example in such cases:  almost anything
is available for MS/DOS simply because of the size of the market.  This does
NOT generalize to other systems.

Please, let us not have another re-run of the six-character debate; the issue
is not new, I assure you.  Almost nobody likes the six-character nonsense,
but it is a political necessity.  Yes, "political":  standards are worthless
if they are not widely accepted, and acceptance is often a political issue.
-- 
"Mir" means "peace", as in           |  Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
"the war is over; we've won".        | {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,utai}!utzoo!henry