Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!iuvax!bsu-cs!dhesi
From: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: six-character extern id limit
Summary: was Re: "Numerical Recipes in C" is nonport[truncated]
Message-ID: <4003@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Date: 18 Sep 88 17:02:29 GMT
References: <5162@hoptoad.uucp> <225800069@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> <8507@smoke.ARPA> <3981@bsu-cs.UUCP> <1988Sep17.212624.8858@utzoo.uucp>
Reply-To: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Organization: CS Dept, Ball St U, Muncie, Indiana
Lines: 14

I said that I thought Doug Gwyn exaggerated in saying that "many" C
implementors were not in a position to improve the linker that would
"of necessity" be used with the output from their compiler.  The
context was a discussion of ANSI's guaranteeing no more than 6
significant characters in external names.

Both Doug Gwyn and Henry Spencer disagree.  But although I have been
following this newsgroup for some time, I don't recall any specific
cases being described of linkers that can't handle more than
6-character externals and that will of necessity be used to link C
code.  Are there more than just a few?  (Remember, we're talking about
a 6-character limit, not 7 or 8, which are more common.)
-- 
Rahul Dhesi         UUCP:  !{iuvax,pur-ee,uunet}!bsu-cs!dhesi