Identifier length?

[Henry Spencer]

In article <627 at maxim.ERBE.SE> prc at maxim.ERBE.SE (Robert Claeson) writes:
>How long can local (to the file) and external identifiers be in ANSI C?

There is no limit on identifier length.  However, implementations are
permitted to consider only the first N characters significant.  For
internal names, N must be at least 31 and upper and lower case must
be distinct.  For external names, the need to work with existing linkers
limits what ANSI can insist on:  N must be at least 6, and distinctions
of case can be ignored.  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..."
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