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- From: gwyn@brl.arpa (VLD/VMB) (Douglas A. Gwyn)
- Date: Mon, 3 Nov 86 11:42:19 EST
-
- Neil Webber asked why POSIX does not suffer from the constraint that
- led X3J11 to reluctantly require only 6-character monocase extern
- identifier uniqueness. I think the basic answer is that POSIX is
- intended to be a UNIX, or UNIX look-alike, interface standard, and
- that "layered" implementations on top of other operating systems,
- while not precluded by POSIX, are not specifically catered to.
- Thus, a much narrower class of operating system linkers and object
- module formats is involved, and it is felt that those few that don't
- already support long extern identifiers can be changed to do so,
- since the POSIX implementors on such systems are in a position to
- accomplish this (unlike implementors of many layered systems).
-
- Volume-Number: Volume 8, Number 30
-
-