Machine specific predefined names

Doug Gwyn gwyn at brl-smoke.ARPA
Mon Feb 22 12:59:37 AEST 1988


In article <4100 at hoptoad.uucp> gnu at hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) writes:
>As an example, a conforming program probably can't make *any*
>assumptions about the format of file names...

Except for some minimal guarantee about header names.

Generally, file names will have to be provided by the environment,
best done either via compile-time macros or run-time command
arguments.

If you think about it, you'll realize that nothing can really BE
guaranteed.  For example, on UNIX one might think that "foo" is a
usable filename, but that depends on whether the current working
directory is writable, whether "foo" already exists, etc. which
is well beyond the scope of the C standard.

>Some of the more "pedantic" folks might have their Makefiles
>specify "-D__SYSV_TTYS" but they will probably just do "-DSYSV_TTYS"
>like they always have.

There is no need for an application to use _* macro names; that's
necessary only for stuff added to ANSI C by the implementation (in
order to avoid infringing on the names available for application use).



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