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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!alberta!jeff
From: jeff@alberta.UUCP (C. J. Sampson)
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re: length of external names
Message-ID: <380@alberta.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 30-Dec-84 21:38:19 EST
Article-I.D.: alberta.380
Posted: Sun Dec 30 21:38:19 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 31-Dec-84 03:19:48 EST
References: <233@gumby.UUCP> <3194@alice.UUCP>, <236@gumby.UUCP> <4847@utzoo.UUCP>
Organization: his Personal Computer
Lines: 19

> >  and object file format don't accept long or case-sensitive names.  What
> >  does the proposed ANSI standard say about the issue?
> 
> The current draft says that the length limit (if any) and treatment
> of case in external identifiers are "implementation-defined", which
> means that implementors can do things as they wish but must document
> their decisions.  Also, the length limit may not be shorter than 6.

Gads!  When are they going to figure out that 6 or 8 characters is *not*
enough.  I spent three hours porting ogre to an Altos 586 running some
ancient verson of Xenix and most of that was spent changing function
names because I had only 7 signifcant characters.  I think that the standard
should enforce a minimum of 32 characters.  We will make programs more
portable and readable.
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