Shared Lib Question (ISC)

[Dan Bernstein]

In article <19311 at rpp386.cactus.org> jfh at rpp386.cactus.org (John F Haugh II) writes:
> See my other recent posting describing how to construct the routines you've
> listed above.  I'll admit that the statement "without global variables" was
> very poorly worded.  In the context of the discussion, I intended to say
> "without global variables in the shared library segment", since the topic
> at hand is shared libraries.

Okay. Do you agree, then, that global variables (or at least static
variables) can be part of a well-designed, well-programmed library? In
other words, do you agree that there are well-designed, well-programmed
libraries (like malloc() or stdio) which cannot be put into a ``pure''
shared library without some work? In other words, do you agree that
``pure'' shared libraries restrict a good programmer, by forcing him to
do extra work to make some of his libraries sharable? In other words, do
you agree that the feature of ``impure'' shared libraries is indeed
beneficial in some cases?

Good. Glad we settled that.

---Dan