Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site druxp.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!drutx!druxp!mab 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