Re: Not a typewriter

Alan Cox (alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk)
Mon, 14 May 2001 18:01:42 +0100 (BST)


> IIRC, the 6 character linker requirement came from when the Bell Labs folk
> ported the C compiler the IBM mainframe world, not from the early UNIX (tm)
> world. During the original ANSI C meetings, I got the sense from the IBM rep,

6 character linker name limits are very old. Honeywell L66 GCOS3/TSS which I
had the dubious pleasure of experiencing and which is a direct derivative of
GECOS and thus relevant to the era like many 36bit boxes uses 6 char link names

Why - well because 6 BCD characters fit in a 36bit word and its a single compare
to check symbol matches

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