Identifier length?

[David Collier-Brown]

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..."
                                                                ^
>From article <6161 at bsu-cs.UUCP>, by dhesi at bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi):
|  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.
[ discussion of several shortening techniques]

  At this point I usually detail a scheme for upgrading one's linker.
(Sorry, its on the verge of being a knee-jerk reaction...)  I'll
refrain this time and point out that companies expecting to sell
computers to the U.S. and perhaps Canadian government have reason to
extend their linkers to meet the requirements for structured name
spaces sufficient to support Ada [tm, betimes].

  Given that precious experience is a consideration in these
standardization efforts, would someone care to comment on the
**in**advisability of extending the minimum external identifier
length as of the next standardization of the C language.

--dave c-b
[ps: no, that last paragraph wasn't an insult. I reserve them for
 comp.lang.c and people other than Rahul & Henry]
-- 
 David Collier-Brown.  | yunexus!lethe!dave
 Interleaf Canada Inc. |
 1550 Enterprise Rd.   | He's so smart he's dumb.
 Mississauga, Ontario  |       --Joyce C-B