6 char externs and the ANSI standard

[Henry Spencer]

> How can you talk about portability when you consider the large number of
> existing otherwise portable programs this would break?  The standard should
> protect the large number of existing programs, and demand that implementors
> deal with it.  Protecting implementors with weak linkers but screwing existing
> code is not the greatest good for the greatest number.  

One of the ANSI committee's basic goals is the protection of existing
*correct* code.  Note that the previous de facto standard, K&R, quite
explicitly specified an 8-character limit.  Pre-ANSI code which depends
on long names is not portable, regardless of fraudulent claims to the
contrary by Berklocentric implementors.

Don't get me wrong; I am entirely in favor of long names, and I tend to
agree with the suggestion that the 6-character limit on significance of
external names should be listed as a "subset" feature.  But people who
wrote long-name programs long before there was any standard along those
lines, and then had the gall to call them "portable", have no cause to
complain about portability problems.

*MOST* existing C programs were written in environments with a 7-character
limit or something similar.
-- 

	"Yes, Virginia, there is life outside Berkeley."

				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry