Reserved names in ANSI C

[Henry Spencer]

In article <3364 at buengc.BU.EDU> bph at buengc.bu.edu (Blair P. Houghton) writes:
>>Any linker that supports the bare minimum for FORTRAN.  There are more
>>such linkers in the world than you'd think.
>
>Which begs the question:  how difficult is it to have standard-conforming
>implementations implement a linker that handles a larger name space?

Potentially very difficult if you have to convince the supplier to
support two different object-module formats.  Please, folks, let us not
get into a long debate about this one again.  The facts are:

	1. Some suppliers are not willing to do it immediately.

	2. X3J11 is not in the business of legislating morality; its job
	is to produce a standard that will be accepted and followed widely.
	In the real world, this sometimes requires temporary concessions
	to badly-designed but widespread existing software.

	3. This particular concession *is* temporary; the draft standard
	contains an explicit warning that it is likely to go away in future.
-- 
$10 million equals 18 PM       |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
(Pentagon-Minutes). -Tom Neff  | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry at zoo.toronto.edu