Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!rutgers!iuvax!bsu-cs!dhesi From: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Subject: Re: MAJOR ANSI C FLAW (my opinion, of course) Message-ID: <1252@bsu-cs.UUCP> Date: Sat, 10-Oct-87 12:46:33 EDT Article-I.D.: bsu-cs.1252 Posted: Sat Oct 10 12:46:33 1987 Date-Received: Mon, 12-Oct-87 06:45:53 EDT References: <1132@gilsys.UUCP> <1246@bsu-cs.UUCP> <6543@brl-smoke.ARPA> Reply-To: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) Organization: CS Dept, Ball St U, Muncie, Indiana Lines: 28 I wrote, referring to ANSI's 6-character limit on external identifiers in portable C, No modern system requires such short external identifiers and suggested that programmers use 8 characters as a working maximum. In article <6543@brl-smoke.ARPA> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) ) writes: >That's one too many for PDP-11 UNIX, or for most pre-flexnames UNIXes. Doug Gwyn is factually correct, but my point is important too. I don't consider the quoted systems to be modern systems. As technology moves on, those with older architectures will be forced to balance the cost (and benefits) of sticking with what they have against the cost (and benefits) of investing in an upgrade. The length of external identifiers is just one small factor in that. Programmers must ask themselves how much programming convenience they want to give up (e.g. convenience of long identifiers) in order to support users who have consciously chosen not to move with the times. It's great to have choices; and you and I are free to do our own cost/benefit analysis, and our conclusions may not be the same as ANSI's. Why, you could (horrors!) choose to use arrays larger than 64 kilobytes, and leave us 80286 users in the lurch! That's what choice is all about. -- Rahul Dhesi UUCP: !{iuvax,pur-ee,uunet}!bsu-cs!dhesi