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From: rwhite@nusdhub.UUCP (Robert C. White Jr.)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: MAJOR ANSI C FLAW (my opinion, of course)
Message-ID: <135@nusdhub.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 16-Oct-87 15:52:09 EDT
Article-I.D.: nusdhub.135
Posted: Fri Oct 16 15:52:09 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 18-Oct-87 08:34:24 EDT
References: <1132@gilsys.UUCP> <1246@bsu-cs.UUCP> <6543@brl-smoke.ARPA> <123@sdeggo.UUCP>
Organization: National University, San Diego
Lines: 33
Summary: NO.....

In article <292@rose3.Rosemount.COM>, dan@rose3.Rosemount.COM (Dan Messinger) writes:
> In summary, it takes far more than a new version of cc to get longer
> external identifiers.  It a matter of momentum (and profits).  There is
> a LOT of software that needs to be changed on the ol' PDP-11 to increase
> the external id size.  Do you know of any software houses that want to
> develope all that software, knowing that there are a fixed number of PDP-11s
> in the world, and that number is getting smaller?

As long as the numbers only get larger nothing has to be changed.

If an identifier is unique in it's first 6 characters, it is unique
in it's first 31.  The old stuff will still work fine, some of it
[symbolic debuggers etc] just may not be a useful against the new code.

Few of the apps will actually change no matter what, but the "changing"
standard will require some of our favorite utilities to be "changed"

not just:
cc
asm
ld
but also:
dump
sdb
[all the trace stuff]
[all the archive stuff (ar...)]

I think the "will be obsolete" warning is enough for this revision.
That says this limit wont last long, and it gives all those people
out there some warning that all their tools are about to need some
work.

Rob.