🚀 go-pugleaf

Andrew Koenig (ark@research.att.com) wrote:
: In article <4ks0c8$jte@piglet.cc.uic.edu> dhanle2@icarus.cc.uic.edu (David James Hanley) writes:

: > 	No, actually, when I was trimming the post, I accidentally 
: > clipped off your name, and made a typo when I typed it back in.  
: > I realize that mistyping your name is a mortal sin to the god of c++,
: > even if he projects his like for flaming strangers onto others.

: If you had retracted your (claimed) inadvertent insult,
: I would have believed you.

	Oh darn, my life is over.  I misspelled someone's name.  Will
I ever live it down?

: > : Correct about what?  That having a name-mangling standard for C++
: > : would make C++ libraries easier to handle.  Sorry, but he's wrong,
: > : and so are you.

: In order for a standard to have any meaning at all, that standard has
: to specify the behavior of something.  Moreover, any standard has to
: do so in a way that makes it possible to determine whether that 
: something meets the requirements of the standard or not.

	Sure.  I gues this is so hard that standards are never 
made, eh?

: Now, suppose a name-mangling standard existed.  What would it
: specify the behavior of?  Linkers?  What is a linker?  What if I
: give you a C++ implementation that has no linker at all?  Would you
: claim that such an implementation cannot be standard conforming
: because it does not have mangled names for you to inspect?  There
: is no such requirement on C implementations; why should there be
: such a requirement on C++ implementations?

	Again, so all those libraries I link with my C code must
be figments of my imagination.  It would be just too hard to 
agree on a standard implementation.

: Or what if I write a linker that does not use name mangling at
: all, but instead stores types in its symbol table?  Would you
: reject such a linker because it does not mangle names properly?

	Agast!  That couldn't possibly be part of the standard!

: Of, for a third example, consider a compiler and linker that does
: follow the hypothetical name-mangling standard, but gives its users
: no way of determining what names it actually uses?  Does such a
: compiler/linker pair conform?  How can you tell?  How can you test
: conformance?

	I may be really stupid, but I don't understand at all what you
mean here.  Wouldn't the names it uses be determined by the name mangling
standard?

: These are all questions that you must answer before you can even think
: about what a name-mangling standard might mean.

: > 	No, and again, no one said it did.  But a lot of work has been
: > done to allow link-compatibility within C libraries.  It seems foolish
: > to throw this all away.

: Indeed.  But having a name-mangling standard would not affect this.

	Yes it would.  it wou;dn't clear up every concievable possible
theoretical problem, but it would be another big problem out of the
way of simpl distribution of libraries, object files, etc.

--
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David Hanley,                 |______     Computer Science graduate student.  
dhanley@lac.eecs.uic.edu      |\ ___/__  Martial Artist. Biker. Chess Freak   
www_lac.eecs.uic.edu/~dhanley/| \\ /  / Libertarian.  Atheist.  Bisexual.     
My employer barely KNOWS me.  |  \/BI/ Aspiring novelist.Joyce Kafka Neitzchie
-----------------------------------\/-----------------------------------------
Hemlock? I never touch the stuff!