upen@watarts.UUCP (Ue-Li Pen) (01/06/85)
If there is so much disagreement over how long the identifier is significant
to, why not say:
a) That the number of characters actually stored must be at least 7.
b) The length of the whole identifier is significant.
Eg:
foo_bar_three on a machine which only stores 7 characters of the identifier,
would still be unique to:
foo_bar_two As although the first 7 characters are the same, the lengths
are different.
This would at least ease the "identifier portability" problems somewhat.
And would certainly ease the port of OGRE to a machine which has only
7 characters significant in the identifier.. like CI-86.. henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (01/06/85)
> If there is so much disagreement over how long the identifier is significant > to, why not say: > > a) That the number of characters actually stored must be at least 7. > b) The length of the whole identifier is significant. Not a bad suggestion, except that the recalcitrant object-module formats that cause the length-significance problems don't have a "real length" field available either. P.S. 7 is too big; some of them only have 6. Old Unixes are not the problem here! P.P.S. One major manufacturer only has 5, but that was going a little too far for anyone to stomach. -- Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry
upen@watarts.UUCP (Ue-Li Pen) (01/07/85)
> > If there is so much disagreement over how long the identifier is significant > > to, why not say: > > > > a) That the number of characters actually stored must be at least 7. > > b) The length of the whole identifier is significant. > > Not a bad suggestion, except that the recalcitrant object-module formats > that cause the length-significance problems don't have a "real length" > field available either. > You wouldn't have to change the object-module format, just store the length as an ascii character at the end of the identifier.. This gets around modifying your linker and compiler - however it would reduce the size of your "significant characters" stored..