External Linkage in dpANS C

[Barry Margolin]

One point in favor of the six-character case-insensitive limitation on
external linkage is that it doesn't break any existing portable
programs.  Prior to the ANSI work there existed a number of C
compilers on systems with such limitations, so any C program that
depends on more than this is not portable to those systems.  If you
aren't worried about porting to those systems now, why do you think
you would be once the standard is published?  The only problem is if
you want to advertise that your program is strictly conforming to ANSI
C (i.e. that it will run on ANY ANSI C implementation); if you depend
on long, case-sensitive external names you'll have to mention that
exception.

BTW, I've heard about programs that will go through a collection of
source files finding all the external names that clash in the first
six case-insensitive characters and rename them uniquely.  This will
let you develop programs on a flexname system and easily convert them
to fully portable versions.



Barry Margolin
Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar at think.com
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