Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/3/84; site wjh12.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!harvard!wjh12!kendall From: kendall@wjh12.UUCP (Sam Kendall) Newsgroups: net.lang.c Subject: ANSI C standard will allow extensions Message-ID: <526@wjh12.UUCP> Date: Fri, 12-Oct-84 21:05:50 EDT Article-I.D.: wjh12.526 Posted: Fri Oct 12 21:05:50 1984 Date-Received: Sun, 14-Oct-84 04:43:30 EDT Organization: Delft Consulting Corp., New York Lines: 23 Several articles have objected to the 6-character external identifier limit thinking that it is an absolute limit on compilers. > I think you should definetly have the standard allow long external variable > names. Limiting them to 6 characters would have a number of bad effects: > ... > 2) Compiler writers would *not* follow the standard. The problem with > this is that everyone will violate it in a different way. Some > compilers will support 31 char limits, some 64, some 255. In other > words, the standard will not be used and would therefore be a > failure. Luckily, it's not quite as bad as that. The ANSI C standard, unlike the Ada standard, will allow extensions. The standard is simply to specify what a program must be like if it hopes to be 100% portable; implementors are not discouraged from adding to the language they compile. (And on the 6-character issue, since System V Release 2 and 4.2bsd both support indefinite-length identifiers and will presumably continue to do so, programs can be somewhat portable even if they use big names.) Sam Kendall {allegra,ihnp4,ima,amd}!wjh12!kendall Delft Consulting Corp. decvax!genrad!wjh12!kendall