Machine specific predefined names

[Doug Gwyn]

In article <265 at aiva.ed.ac.uk> richard at uk.ac.ed.aiva (Richard Tobin) writes:
>It would also be nice if a user could easily replace the open() function
>(for example) with one of their own that could call the original one.

I disagree strongly with this.  The application writer has no way of knowing
what the specific internal library semantics are, making it likely that his
meddling would break the behavior of some of the standard library routines.

For example, my System V emulation package on a BRL/JHU PDP-11 UNIX kept
track of open file descriptors internally.  Interception of _open() by an
application that was unaware of this could have led to erroneous operation.