Newsgroups: comp.std.c
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Identifier length?
Message-ID: <1989Mar17.175939.1226@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <627@maxim.ERBE.SE> <1989Mar16.171213.21210@utzoo.uucp> <6161@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 89 17:59:39 GMT

In article <6161@bsu-cs.UUCP> dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) writes:
>I've described in the past how simple it is for a C implementation to
>overcome the 6-character limit of existing linkers without changing the
>linker.  If the programmer can think of a name like "get_time_of_day"
>and mentally convert it to "gettod" without creating a conflict, surely
>an implementation of C can do the same.

The Rationale says:  "This option [identifier mapping] quickly becomes very
complex for large, multi-source programs, since a program-wide database has
to be maintained for all modules to avoid giving two different identifiers
the same actual external name.  It also reduces the usefulness of source
code debuggers and cross reference programs, which generally work with the
short mapped names, since the source-code name used by the programmer would
likely bear little resemblance to the name actually generated..."

(The first part is obviously thinking about doing it as part of the compiler,
not as a pre-linking pass.)

Rahul, did you propose your notion to X3J11?  Formally, I mean, not just
by talking about it on the net?  If so, what was the response?  If not,
why not?
-- 
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