Some thoughts on 6 char externs

[Robert Viduya]

Perhaps ANSI shouldn't be wasting their time with the X3J11 committee.
I'd  much  rather  they  spent  time producing a set of standards that
describe standards for operating systems.   The  set  needn't  be  all
encompassing  as there are myriads of operating systems out there and,
depending on application need as well as personal  preferences,  there
ought  to  be  different types of operating systems (just as there are
myriads of high level languages).  However, what the  standard  should
include  is  a  fixed minimum length for linker names  ("All operating
systems that  conform  to  this  standard  must  support  at  least  n
character  symbols  in  their  linker/loader.").  I can think of a few
other things common between operating systems  that,  in  my  opinion,
ought  to  be  standardized,  but isn't (character set springs to mind
rather quickly;  our site has three different systems, all with  their
own character set).

As I said, the standard need not describe a supposedly ideal operating
system.   It  just  needs  to  describe  the things common between all
operating systems in an effort to standardize them.  Then,  once  that
question  is  settled,  go  on  and  standardize  languages  to run on
operating systems that conform to the standard.

				robert
-- 
Robert Viduya
Office of Computing Services
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta GA 30332
Phone:  (404) 894-4669

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