Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 (Tek) 9/26/83; site orca.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxl!houxm!houxz!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!orca!andrew From: andrew@orca.UUCP (Andrew Klossner) Newsgroups: net.lang.c Subject: Re: C compiler for pdp-11 under RSX Message-ID: <873@orca.UUCP> Date: Tue, 5-Jun-84 15:47:17 EDT Article-I.D.: orca.873 Posted: Tue Jun 5 15:47:17 1984 Date-Received: Wed, 6-Jun-84 07:39:21 EDT References: <1880@sdccsu3.UUCP>, <192@dicomed.UUCP> <2849@brl-vgr.ARPA> Organization: Tektronix, Wilsonville OR Lines: 21 "I believe they [Whitesmiths] may also be removing the requirement that all extern storage definitions (not declarations) be initialized exactly once among all load modules." They can't. Remember that Whitesmiths' original claim to fame was in providing C compilers for a great many machines running operating systems other than Unix. On many systems, the loader doesn't speak COMMON blocks and requires that a single module (file) EXPORT a symbol and that all other modules IMPORT it. When compiling C code a file at a time, there is no way to do this with the existing language definition. The language mod allows a global symbol to be EXPORTed when initialized, IMPORTed when not initialized. I can't think of a language change which is much less painful and which will satisfy this class of linkers. -- Andrew Klossner (decvax!tektronix!orca!andrew) [UUCP] (orca!andrew.tektronix@rand-relay) [ARPA]