On Fri, Aug 7, 2020 at 12:07 PM Noel Chiappa <jnc(a)mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
wrote:
IIRC, you could use longer names than that (in C), but external references
only used the first 7 (in C - C symbols had a leading
'_' tacked on; I
used to
know why), 8 (in assembler).
Precisely to avoid collisions between external names in C and names in
assembler (whose namespace was flat except for local labels) when they were
linked into your program.
For similar reasons, F77 names had a trailing '_' tacked on.
John Cowan
http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan cowan(a)ccil.org
There is / One art / No more / No less
To do / All things / With art- / -Lessness --Piet Hein