Re: Word For Today: “Uglification”

On Tue, 12 Mar 2024 01:33:00 -0400, James Kuyper wrote:

They are called "reserved identifiers", a name which more directly
addresses their purpose. They don't just start with underscores - there
are several different sets of identifiers, reserved for different
purposes. See section 7.1.3 for details. They are provided by *an*
implementation. Note the use of the singular.

Looking at the C99 spec, section 7.1.3:

    Also reserved for the implementor are all external identifiers
    beginning with an underscore, and all other identifiers beginning
    with an underscore followed by a capital letter or an underscore.
    This gives a name space for writing the numerous behind-the-scenes
    non-external macros and functions a library needs to do its job
    properly.

The problem I have with that is the singular form of “library”. In a
typical Linux distro, you could have thousands of libraries installed.
I just did this command on my Debian system:

    dpkg-query -l lib*dev | wc -l

and the answer came back “1037”. The idea that a C-language
implementation and run-time environment is any sense monolithic seems
hopelessly out of touch.