Re: Word For Today: “Uglification”

On 2024-03-12, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

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.

There is no such out-of-touch idea. In (say) a Glibc-based system, only
the GCC, Glibc and kernel headers are part of the implementation (which
comprises C, POSIX plus GNU and Linux extensions), and only the GCC and
Glibc library components and their external names.

Other libraries are third parties; the __ and _[A-Z] namespace
simply doesn't belong to them.

C doesn't provide any special tools for the application developer and
third party code to avoid clashes among themselves.

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