🚀 go-pugleaf

Andrew Koenig (ark@research.att.com) wrote:
: In article <4ku4lk$lg6@engnews2.Eng.Sun.COM> linden@positive.Sun.COM (Peter van der Linden) writes:

: > >How would you have maintained C-style linkage and C++ typesafe
: > >linkage in the same object module without changing the linker?

: > By writing a linker pre-pass program which checks for and enforces
: > the type-safe linking rules.

: But such a program (a) would have to be rewritten for every machine
: to which C++ was ported, and (b) would not solve the problem of what
: name to give the linker for overloaded functions with the same name.

So?  

Eiffel and Ada and Sather compilers do it and their generics
work like a swiss watch.

: For example, suppose one translation unit has

: 	void f(int) { /* ... */ }

: and another has

: 	void f(double) { /* ... */ }

: These two translation units are compiled separately.  When compiling C++
: into C, what names should the compiler give to the C versions of these functions
: so that your hypothetical prelinker will be able to tell them apart?

This shows that link semantics are language semantics (and are "remote
object call" semantics), and it's only an accident of history that
assembly, C and Fortran could all be satisfied by the same linking model. 

The real problem is that the Unix library API has only 'C' semantics so
there is not sufficient motivation to leave this tarpit of anachronism.

The other anachronism is the insistence upon 'compiled separately'.

: -- 
: 				--Andrew Koenig
: 				  ark@research.att.com