IIRC, there were quite a few compilers with very short identifier uniqueness 
length.

It was even worse for external symbols in some cases, how about 5 
characters!

What I thought was ridiculous is that the language permitted identifiers 
longer than the max length for uniqueness, usually without any warning. So 
things like this could really get you:

static int aprefixbefore_globalvar;

int f()
{
    int aprefixbefore_localvar;
    aprefixbefore_globalvar = 123;
    return aprefixbefore_globalvar;
}

Bob Ammerman
RAm Systems

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Lawrence Lile" <llile@projsolco.com>
To: "Microcontroller discussion list - Public." <piclist@mit.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, October 19, 2004 8:27 AM
Subject: RE: [AD] Looking for work (style guide)


> This 6-8 character thing may be a legacy style from a very old compiler. 
> It certainly harks back to the days of 8.3 filenames and other such 
> limitations.   Now I wonder if it is really true, that some C compilers 
> might not distinguish two variables with the first 8 letters identical?
>
> -- Lawrence Lile, P.E.
> Electrical and Electronic Solutions
> Project Solutions Companies
> www.projsolco.com
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: William "Chops" Westfield [mailto:westfw@mac.com]
>> Sent: Monday, October 18, 2004 6:37 PM
>> To: Microcontroller discussion list - Public.
>> Subject: Re: [AD] Looking for work (style guide)
>>
>> On Oct 18, 2004, at 11:28 AM, James Newtons Massmind wrote:
>> >>
>> >> It is time for me to make my annual post of my style guide.
>> >> Here are the Ten Commandments of C Style
>> >>
>> Blasphemous heathen!
>>
>> The only thing there that I have objections to is the idea that
>> indentifiers should be unique in the first 6 to 8 characters.  In
>> particular, it can frequently be a good idea to have structure name
>> members include the structure:
>>      struct udptype_ {
>>          unsigned short udp_sport;
>>          unsigned short udp_dport;
>>          unsigned short udp_length;
>>          unsigned short udp_cksum;
>>      } udp;
>>
>> This can help considerable when searching, since things like "length"
>> by themselves are distressingly common.  once you use up 4+ characters
>> on structure prefix, you don't have much left if you want things unique
>> in 6 characters.  (of course, the above example IS...)
>>
>> BillW
>>
>>
>>
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