Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!kddlab!titcca!sragwa!wsgw!socslgw!diamond!diamond
From: diamond@diamond.csl.sony.junet (Norman Diamond)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: C linkage query
Message-ID: <10345@socslgw.csl.sony.JUNET>
Date: 9 Jun 89 04:25:11 GMT
References: <9449@alice.UUCP>
Sender: news@csl.sony.JUNET
Reply-To: diamond@csl.sony.junet (Norman Diamond)
Organization: Sony Computer Science Laboratory Inc., Tokyo, Japan
Lines: 21

In article <9449@alice.UUCP> ark@alice.UUCP (Andrew Koenig) writes:

>Does anyone have a C compiler + linker incapable of handling this:
>	extern int foo;
>	main() { }
>That is: are there any C implementations that turn an
>`extern' declaration for a variable that is never actually
>referenced into a genuine external reference that inhibits
>linking?

Does it matter if any news reader actually has one?  Such things are
permitted to exist (or were permitted to; and this looks like the kind
of thing that ANSI didn't dare to touch).  If such things exist, they
are most likely on machines which aren't capable of receiving this
kind of news.  If they don't exist, they still might some day.  You
should never overestimate your opponents either ;-).

--
Norman Diamond, Sony Computer Science Lab (diamond%csl.sony.co.jp@relay.cs.net)
 The above opinions are my own.  However, if you see this at Waterloo, Stanford,
 or Anterior, then their administrators must have approved of these opinions.