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From: dag@chinet.UUCP (Daniel A. Glasser)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: MAJOR ANSI C FLAW (my opinion, of course)
Message-ID: <1788@chinet.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 27-Oct-87 12:56:59 EST
Article-I.D.: chinet.1788
Posted: Tue Oct 27 12:56:59 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 30-Oct-87 07:11:16 EST
References: <1298@wyszecki.munsell.UUCP> <8781@utzoo.UUCP> <135@usl-pc.UUCP>
Reply-To: dag@chinet.UUCP (Daniel A. Glasser)
Organization: Chinet - Public Access Unix
Lines: 43
Summary: New linkers for old machines & let us move on


Once again, people seem to be missing the point about old systems with
old object formats and old linkers which only support short mono-case
identifiers.  Sure, the compiler writer can write a pre-linker or a
whole linker that can be used to link both old and new object formats
together.  This is a LOT of work.  The pre-linker would prohibit the
use of some features provided by some linkers in the final link, like
overlays between user-supplied modules.  Remember that not all machines
have huge linear address spaces.  Not even some so-called "modern" ones.
Lets look at a simple example:  RT-11 linker replacement.  The standard
DEC PDP-11 object format stores labels in RAD-40./RAD-50, which has no
lower case, so name smashing is out.  If the compiler vendor chooses to
write a linker and have that linker accepted by the user community, the
following features must be supported:
	code overlays (RT-11 style)
	PID only (.SAV)
	Relocatable (.REL,.SYS)
Now, lets move on to TKB, the RSX-11M/M+ task builder.  This linker
requires support of PLAS overlays, memory resident/disk resident
overlays, clustered libraries, supervisor libraries, shared code,
Psect extension, shared libraries, etc. etc. etc..  Just TRY and read
the TKB manual some time.  It is not worth the compiler vendors while
to try and write a replacement for a very powerful (if difficult to use)
tool unless the market is being limited to simple users.
If you don't want to write for these machines anyway, why do you care
at all about the six character limit?  Most Unix systems support names
at least 16 characters long, and so do most other new systems.

My point is that you should stop all this noise about the six monocase
character external identifer MINIMUM maximum.  The arguments are going
round and round, and it does not make one bit of difference to the
majority of programmers, since they don't have to deal with the low
end implementation.  A compiler that supports 32767 character externals
using the full ISO latin 1 character set can still be fully conforming --
a compiler that supports only 5 character mono-case character externals
cannot.  That is all that there is to it.  Now, let us get on to some
more contriversial topics, y'know, things that matter.  Huh?
-- 
					Daniel A. Glasser
					...!ihnp4!chinet!dag
					...!ihnp4!mwc!dag
					...!ihnp4!mwc!gorgon!dag
	One of those things that goes "BUMP!!! (ouch!)" in the night.