ABIs and the futurrr of UNIX(tm)

[Systems Programmer]

On 31 March 1988 weiser.pa at xerox.com writes:

>>In article <431 at micropen> dave at micropen (David F. Carlson) writes:
>>
>>Why can't a machine independent intermediate
>>form be developed for UNIX solely to be translated into native binary on the
>>target machine by a similar utility?  This form would have to be opaque 
>>enough to discourage un-compiling but adaptable enough to allow for tight 
>>native translation on any SystemV (and eventually POSIX) machine.
>
>I propose obscufated (obscurified) C.  With enough variable name mangling and
>gratuitous casting, reading can be just as hard as disassembling.
>
>-mark 

What a delightfully *perverse* idea! 8-Q  Who taught this man to
think like that?  In any event, if the code were *that* weird,
its performance would most likely make it unmarketable.  Too bad...
it was a such a *happy* thought. ;-)

                                       Scott Bennett
                                       Systems Programming
                                       Northern Illinois University
                                       DeKalb, Illinois 60115
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