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From: wong@llama.rtech.UUCP (J. Wong)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: MAJOR ANSI C FLAW (my opinion, of course)
Message-ID: <1323@rtech.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 13-Oct-87 21:54:20 EDT
Article-I.D.: rtech.1323
Posted: Tue Oct 13 21:54:20 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 16-Oct-87 04:53:02 EDT
References: <1132@gilsys.UUCP> <1246@bsu-cs.UUCP> <6543@brl-smoke.ARPA> <104@aimt.UUCP>
Sender: news@rtech.UUCP
Reply-To: wong@llama.UUCP (J. Wong)
Organization: Relational Technology, Inc. Alameda, CA
Lines: 28

In article <104@aimt.UUCP> breck@aimt.UUCP (Robert Breckinridge Beatie) writes:
>
>Hmmm...  why is a 6 character limit necessary in any environment?  I'm not
>necessarily disagreeing with you.  But I am curious.
>

IBM linker/loaders recognize only 6 characters of significance.

>
>Well, isn't portability the reason we need a standard in the first place?
>A standard that programmers are *strongly* tempted to disregard seems to be
>of little, if any, use.
>
>In addition, this standard actually seems to be a step backward at least in
>this regard.  As you pointed out (sorry for deleting the lines) even PDP unix
>C compilers supported a 7 character external name.  Why are we now being limited
>even more severely?
>
The point is that if you expect to port a program to an IBM mainframe,
you'd better have all your external names unique within 6 characters.

				J. Wong		ucbvax!mtxinu!rtech!wong

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