Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!ukma!uflorida!novavax!twwells!bill
From: bill@twwells.uucp (T. William Wells)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c
Subject: Re: What namespaces are available?
Keywords: namespace, reserved, semi-reserved
Message-ID: <772@twwells.uucp>
Date: 13 Mar 89 04:13:53 GMT
References: <11975@haddock.ima.isc.com> <528@garcon.cso.uiuc.edu> <11982@haddock.ima.isc.com> <535@garcon.cso.uiuc.edu> <832@Portia.Stanford.EDU> <543@garcon.cso.uiuc.edu>
Reply-To: bill@twwells.UUCP (T. William Wells)
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In article <543@garcon.cso.uiuc.edu> mcdaniel@uicsrd.csrd.uiuc.edu (Tim McDaniel) writes:
: karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer) writes (marked with ">"):
: >     _[a-z0-9][_A-Za-z0-9]*  what I called semi-reserved
:
: This behavior just seems so useless.  It's not a problem for me,
: understand; it's just something I'm scratching my head over and saying
: "What were they thinking of?".
:
: If I use the semi-reserved namespace, I have to "check for actual
: conflicts on my particular system" (with the implementation and with
: other libraries) and can avoid "polluting the namespace that is
: available for portable programs."  I have to check the implementation
: uses because it might be using semi-reserved names.

The difference between the two namespaces is this: the reserved space
can't portably be used in a hosted environment. The semi-reserved
space can, but not for externals. That, however, leaves #defines,
structure fields and tags, enumeration constants and tags, local
variables, and other items with internal or no linkage.

---
Bill
{ uunet | novavax } !twwells!bill
(BTW, I'm going to be looking for a new job sometime in the next
few months.  If you know of a good one, do send me e-mail.)