identifiers

[Henry Spencer]

> If there is so much disagreement over how long the identifier is significant
> to, why not say:
> 
> a) That the number of characters actually stored must be at least 7.
> b) The length of the whole identifier is significant.

Not a bad suggestion, except that the recalcitrant object-module formats
that cause the length-significance problems don't have a "real length"
field available either.

P.S.  7 is too big; some of them only have 6.  Old Unixes are not the
	problem here!

P.P.S. One major manufacturer only has 5, but that was going a little too
	far for anyone to stomach.
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry