Subject: Re: how to avoid API namespace collisions in an ever evolving system
To: NetBSD Userlevel Technical Discussion List <tech-userlevel@netbsd.org>
From: Greg A. Woods <woods@weird.com>
List: tech-userlevel
Date: 08/13/2002 19:08:17
[ On Tuesday, August 13, 2002 at 23:38:15 (+0200), der Mouse wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: how to avoid API namespace collisions in an ever evolving system          (was: CVS commit: basesrc)
>
> What is this "sure-to-be-unique naming convention", and how do you know
> it's unique, either now or more especially in the future?

Well of course you don't get any such guarantee.

That's why it's better to use -D_POSIX_SOURCE (though of course that
won't even work on a non-POSIX system, so some combination of techniques
is best if you want your code to be as portable as possible).

>  Not to mention that
> doing so would introduce nonportability due to external name length
> limits making everything collide.

I haven't worried about such limits, at least not about any less than
say about 30 characters, for well over a decade now and I haven't found
such a requirement to have constricted the portability of my code to any
extent whatsoever (though I have not targetted many embedded systems in
that time).

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098;            <g.a.woods@ieee.org>;           <woods@robohack.ca>
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