Identifier length?

[Rahul Dhesi]

In article <1989Mar16.171213.21210 at utzoo.uucp> henry at utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
writes:
>The Rationale comments:  "...strong sentiment
>was expressed for making C ``right'' by requiring longer names everywhere...
>This is unacceptable since the whole reason for a standard is portability,
>and many systems today simply do not provide such a name space..."
                                                               ^
The 6-character limit is water under the bridge and complaining about
it now won't change it, so I won't do that.  I do object to the above
reasoning, because it implies something incorrect.

I've described in the past how simple it is for a C implementation to
overcome the 6-character limit of existing linkers without changing the
linker.  If the programmer can think of a name like "get_time_of_day"
and mentally convert it to "gettod" without creating a conflict, surely
an implementation of C can do the same.

1.   The C compiler generates object files containing long external
     identifiers when needed.  It extends the object file format
     to accommodate these identifiers.

2.   A pre-linker scans all object files.  Those that contain no long
     identifiers are already ready for the system linker.  In those
     that contain long names, it converts the long long names to short
     ones, and generates code ready for linking with the standard system
     linker.  In each generated short name it adds a special character
     that never occurs in the name of any library routine.  Or it
     recognizes everything in the ANSI standard libraries and
     system-specific libraries and avoids generating a conflicting
     name.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi         UUCP:  <backbones>!{iuvax,pur-ee}!bsu-cs!dhesi
                    ARPA:  dhesi at bsu-cs.bsu.edu