external names that aren't valid C identifiers

C. J. Sampson jeff at alberta.UUCP
Sat Feb 23 15:49:46 AEST 1985


The problem:
	Someone may have to write a program to call a routine called
	"*SYS$CALL" under a non-UNIX operating system.  '$' is not
	a valid character in a variable or function name.

Proposed solution:
	Modify the C standard to allow '$' in variable and function
	names.  This has been objected to extensively.

Perhaps we could do this in the linker.  If people have strong objections to
changing the C compiler, a linker option could be implemented that would
make, say "_syscall" and "*SYS$CALL", or whatever, the same thing.  Another
alternatave, which saves re-writing either the compiler or the linker, and
that people on systems without source could do, would be to write a little
program that would massage the object file and change all refrences of 
"_syscall" to "*SYS$CALL".  Any comments on this idea?
=====================================================================
	Curt Sampson		ihnp4!alberta!jeff
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"It looked like something resembling white marble, which was probably
 what is was: something resembling white marble."



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