Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: ANSI C etc
Message-ID: <1990Jan11.202245.5674@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <5058@ast.cs.vu.nl>
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 90 20:22:45 GMT

In article <5058@ast.cs.vu.nl> ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum) writes:
>... It is my understanding that neither
>ANSI nor POSIX forbid implementers from adding new library routines as
>long as all the ones in the standards work correctly, i.e., there is no
>namespace pollution by the existence of callm1 in the library, or by
>the existence of a routine to compute bessel functions or anything else.

That's correct.  So long as a user can write a program which defines
a function foo() for its own purposes, and still be able to use all the
standard functions and have them work, there is no prohibition on having
a non-standard function named foo() available in a library as well.  (Note
that if you want to supply a prototype for it in a header file, you can't
put it in one of the standard header files unless you play tricks, because
the prototype would interfere with the user defining his own.)
-- 
1972: Saturn V #15 flight-ready|     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
1990: birds nesting in engines | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu