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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