External Linkage in dpANS C

[James Buster]

I saw mentioned in passing in one of these newsgroups (comp.std.c, comp.lang.c)
that a variable with external linkage in dpANS C is resolved with 6 significant
characters and no case sensitivity. I have some questions regarding this:

1. Is this true?
2. Is six significant monocase characters the *minimal implementation*,
   or *required*?
3. If required, why should a case sensitive language like C
   use a case insensitive linker?
4. If required, why should I damage my flexnames linker?
5. If required, why should anybody want to use such a brain damaged
   implementation of C?
5. If required, how can only 6 significant characters be portable?
6. If required, why should companies with ancient linker technology
   force me to use such ancient technology, or why can't they use 80s
   linker technology?
7. I presume I don't have to explain the number of programs
   that would break because of this behavior (in particular,
   the external identifiers _printw and _printf conflict).
   Also, creating a function Write to interface to the system
   write function (along with some extra stuff) is relatively
   common practice.
8. In general, aaaarrrrggghhh!

--------------------------------------------
	     James Buster
	Mad Hacker Extraordinaire
    	...!ames!vsi1!bitbug
	   bitbug at vicom.com
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