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From: mab@druxp.UUCP (BlandMA)
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re: $ in identifiers -- poll
Message-ID: <659@druxp.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 21-Dec-84 18:41:41 EST
Article-I.D.: druxp.659
Posted: Fri Dec 21 18:41:41 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 23-Dec-84 00:05:53 EST
References: <273@desint.UUCP> <20980036@cmu-cs-k.ARPA>
Organization: AT&T Information Systems Laboratories, Denver
Lines: 19

There have been several suggestions to resolve the $ identifier problem
by adding new constructs to the language.  Perhaps a better (at least
different) place would be to have the linker/loader (whatever you call it)
do the name translation.  I seem to recall an IBM link editor capable of
something like this.

For example, to make a call to the sys$whatever function, you would
write your code using a syntactically valid C identifier, such as
sys_whatever.  The load command would include some option to resolve
the symbol "sys_whatever" to "sys$whatever".  There would probably be
a file on the system somewhere that contains the commonly used translations
for that particular system.

I would prefer this solution over changing every compiler for
every language that currently doesn't allow $ in identifiers.
-- 
Alan Bland
{ihnp4, allegra}!druxp!mab
AT&T Information Systems Labs, Denver