long identifiers

[Kevin Weller]

In a mail response, datanguay at watmath.waterloo.edu (David Adrien Tanguay) writes:
>
> So you are claiming that Unix library assumptions are *not* a problem when
> porting software to GCOS? I didn't think so :-)
>
> None the less, if you assume a Unix environment, then your software is not
> portable. If you don't care, fine. It is generally fairly simple, however,
> to isolate non-portable functionality into clearly marked system dependent
> modules, which helps anybody who might someday attempt to port your software
> to some non-Unix (non-Posix) system.
> -- 
> David Tanguay            Software Development Group, University of Waterloo

That's not what I meant to say (my incomplete statements have struck
again! :-).  Like I told Mr. Davies, my programs assume they're
running under UNIX, NOT that every machine runs UNIX (quite false).
There are simply too many "standards" out there to support, so I
choose a reasonable (IMHO) subset of them which covers many different
hardware platforms (something no other operating system has done so
successfully as UNIX).  There are no absolute portability standards,
as I'm sure you're well aware.

Even if I choose to explicitly support UNIX in general, I undertake
no small task, a direct consequence of the multiplicity of Unices
out there.  I realize now that I have indeed hidden many of the system
dependencies in library functions simply as a result of modular
programming practices, so we might say that I implicitly support other
operating systems provided they have the same basic functionality as
UNIX (it would be kind of hard to find the equivalent multitasking,
multiuser, record-locking, etc., features under something as primitive
as MS-DOS, for instance).  I'm not familiar with GCOS (heck, I'd never
even heard of it until your original post), but if it has these
*essential* capabilities, then it should be easy to port, say, my C
ISAM library there.  I was in a situation similar to yours for several
years when I was working under OS-9, Microware's multitasking,
multiuser operating system for Motorola series CPU's, so I guess I
can't really make myself insensitive in good conscience.

-- Kev