🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1355@syma.sussex.ac.uk> andrewn@syma.UUCP (Andrew D Nimmo) writes:
>
>	On compiling a C program on our Symmetry, the compiler
> complained that '$' was an illegal character.  Compilers on other
> machines have never given me this problem - is it a bug or do we have to
> live with it?
>-- 
>    Andrew D. Nimmo, VLSI and Graphics Research Group,
>    EAPS II, University of Sussex, Falmer, BRIGHTON, East Sussex, BN1 9Qt
>    TEL: +44 273 606755 x 2617
>    EMAIL: (JANET) andrewn@syma.sussex.ac.uk | (UUCP) ...mcsun!ukc!syma!andrewn

It's not a bug - it's due to Sequent's C compiler being derived from
AT&T's C compiler, which does not accept '$' as a valid character in an
identifier.  Sequent is trying to be compatible with AT&T, so we have
no plans to change this in the near future.  (It's invalid in ANSI C too.)

My guess is that C compilers that do accept '$' in identifiers have
been so extended because they had a need to interface C routines with
routines written on other languages.  E.g., DEC's VAX systems make
heavy use of $ in system routines, and I can see that they would find
such an extension handy.

If you have such a need, you might do what I did when I needed a C
function that had a '%' in its name:  I compiled the C function with
-SO, which gave me the assembly language output on stdout, and piped
that through sed which changed the name to what I wanted, and then
piped that into the assembler.

	cc -SO -O func.c | sed /func_name/s//%&/ | as -o func.o

This put my '%' as the leading char of the name, where I needed it.
You could do the same with a '$'.  (Of course a '$' can't be the
leading char in an identifier as a leading '$' has a different meaning
to the assembler.)  This kludge will let you change a valid C name to
the required name.

Finally, if you really need this enhancement, please file a mailbug
specifying that it's important to you to be able to compile such
identifiers.  It could be that there's a growing source of C code
coming from non-Unix systems that have this need, and Sequent should
provide the ability.  (If we do so, I'm sure we'd enable the
feature only when specified by some new command-line option.)

Good luck,
- Dorsey