6 char externs and the ANSI standard

[joemu at tekecs.UUCP]

Here's another hot issue in the committee. Should the minimum character
limit for external symbols be longer than 6 chars, case indistinct?

Arguments for 6 char:
1. The standard's purpose is to define a portable language that may be supported
   on most if not all machines. Some older machines can not support more than
   this limit. To ignore this limitation would be contrary to its purpose.
2. The limit is a minimum NOT a maximum, your compilers are free to support
   longer identifiers, but PORTABLE programs should not depend on them.
3. Prelinking is perceved to be a time consuming kludge.

Arguments against 6 char:
1. leads to cryptic names
2. external and internal identifiers have differing significant lengths
3. compiler systems on machines with smaller limits may "prelink" their
   objects similar to the mechanism proposed for ada. The prelinker would
   map these longer names to shorter names and provide the data necessary
   for symbolic debuggers to convert the names back and forth.

I know this topic has been discussed before in this forum, but the
committee really needs to get a clear sense of the user community on how
acceptable this limitation is.