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From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re: Lattice/UNIX incompatibility
Message-ID: <4847@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 30-Dec-84 00:01:26 EST
Article-I.D.: utzoo.4847
Posted: Sun Dec 30 00:01:26 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 30-Dec-84 00:01:26 EST
References: <233@gumby.UUCP> <3194@alice.UUCP>, <236@gumby.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 14

>  ... but the Microsoft linker
>  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.
There is a definite implication that arbitrary-length names are nice,
but it is politically necessary for conforming implementations to be
possible even on machines with old linker formats.
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry