Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxl!houxm!houxz!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!hplabs!sri-unix!gwyn@BRL-VLD.ARPA From: gwyn@BRL-VLD.ARPA Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards Subject: Re: Bug in Unix System V C compiler Message-ID: <12228@sri-arpa.UUCP> Date: Wed, 8-Aug-84 16:03:09 EDT Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.12228 Posted: Wed Aug 8 16:03:09 1984 Date-Received: Sat, 11-Aug-84 01:22:42 EDT Lines: 18 From: Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB)The restriction to 7 significant characters in a C symbol applies only to static symbols, not auto or register variables. The latter have truncated symbols in the symbol table but the code generated is correct, since it does not have to refer to the symbol name. The extra character prepended to the symbol is ~ in this case, _ for externs. The current PDP-11 (Ritchie) C compiler, as Ron noted, warns whenever there is an important symbol clash, but it is quiet in those cases where correct code will result. A complete solution to the problem of using the 8 characters at the assembler level would require that all `reserved' assembler symbols be given a special form different from any possible compiler-generated symbols, e.g. they could start with a . This seems like too much work. Another approach would be to convert the PDP-11 to flexnames but for some unknown reason this has not been done.