lepreau@utah-cs.UUCP (Jay Lepreau) (08/01/84)
The following program fails to compile under the Sys V.1 compiler:
main()
{
int godamnid1;
int godamnid2;
}
This bug is, as usual, not present in the 4.2 BSD C compiler,
which I use in preference to the Sys V one.gwyn@brl-tgr.UUCP (08/01/84)
And of course you turkeys are careful to write code that uses long identifiers so that porting it to non-BSD UNIXes is much more work than it had to be. Very professional.
mcferrin@inuxc.UUCP (P McFerrin) (08/03/84)
main()
{
int godamnid1;
int godamnid2;
}
The above is not bug for system V C compiler. Only the 1st 8 characters
of internal names are significant. Thus the above example attempted to
declare the variable 'godamnid' twice.jwp@sdchema.UUCP (John Pierce) (08/03/84)
In article <3726@brl-tgr.ARPA> gwyn@brl-tgr.ARPA (Doug Gwyn <gwyn>) writes: >And of course you turkeys are careful to write code that >uses long identifiers so that porting it to non-BSD UNIXes >is much more work than it had to be. Very professional. Gee, I didn't realize any of you really extra super professional people working on those really super professional non-BSD systems considered any of us poor turkeys running BSD systems capable of writing anything you might *want*. My goodness!!! Do you really mean that someday some really extra super non-BSD superior professional type programmer might really ... God! This has me so excited I can hardly type!! ... might really actually maybe want to port something some slob BSD hacker wrote to their lovely pristinely professional non-BSD system!!?? I can hardly believe it! I mean, like, man, the thought just really boggles my (admittedly inferior nonprofessional) mind!!! Golly Whiz!!! I gonna have to start giving this some thought though that's probably gonna be hard for a poor nonprofessional like me. Let's see... I guess I can start with cutting identifiers back to 8 characters (since that seems to be what all the great professional people on the standards committee think is best)... And I guess I could put in line numbers so they could find things easier... WOW, MAN!! I just had a BRILLIANT idea (in my nonprofessional judgement, of course)... I could write everything in FORTRAN (pure ANSII standard, of course) since we all know that that's really easy to port... John Pierce, Chemistry, UC San Diego sdcsvax!sdchema!jwp
mats@dual.UUCP (Mats Wichmann) (08/04/84)
The sharp wit and biting sarcasm of the referenced articles has me falling
asleep. I am not going to hope that this old argument can be put to rest,
but....could we please try? The use of long identifiers provided in the
BSD compiler is typical of nonportable language exentsions that we have
all suffered through with many other languages, and it would have been
nice if this could have been avoided with C. However.....now AT&T is
muddying the waters with flexnames in the Sys V compiler, while the
ANSI standard proposal does not call for this `feature'. It is hard to
flame someone for using the tools available to him locally, UNLESS that
person is specifically working on a commercial product designed to be
portable. For some reason we (and I don't claim innocence here myself)
seem very ready to pronounce the author of a program an idiot for using
some particular feature.
Mats Wichmann
Dual Systems Corp.
...{ucbvax,amd,ihnp4,cbosgd,decwrl,fortune}!dual!matslaura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (08/06/84)
But how many ``clearly not intended to be portable'' ``obviously of local interest only'' and ``but gee, I only wrote it as a 10 minute throw away program'' hacks get pressed into service? And who has time to rewrite them? (answer: the poor sucker who has to port them to another architecture and/or another flavour of UNIX.) Laura Creighton utzoo!laura