Reserved names in ANSI C

[Doug Gwyn]

In article <1150 at vsi.COM> friedl at vsi.COM (Stephen J. Friedl) writes:
>This kind of thing comes up a lot, and it brings up a question I've
>had in my mind: how many real programs will *really* be strictly
>conforming?  Almost all real programs will have to use libraries
>(say, Xwin or curses or networking or Informix) that will make the
>program not strictly conforming.

Lots of my applications are strictly conforming (e.g. see the
information statistics code I recently posted to comp.sources.misc).
In other applications, the bulk of the code is strictly conforming
with system dependencies isolated in separate modules.
In any case, the more portable the bulk of your code is, the less
work you have to do when porting.

>How many people have the six-char limit foremost in their minds?
>How about those who never have to deal with these machines?

Since "lint -p" warns about violations of this constraint, it is
easy to comply with it.  Essentially all my code does -- and I
don't have any 6-character monocase linkers to contend with right
now.  The reason I nevertheless strive for maximum portability is
because I never know what environments my code will have to run
under in the future, so I make sure that I don't have a lot of
work to do to port the code later.  This policy has paid off
handsomely in the past and I'll stick to it.