Re: Prefixing C function names with ‘_’

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello,

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> skribis:

> In regard to
> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-standards/2017-04/msg00000.html:
>
>     I think this is bad advice because both POSIX and glibc reserve names
>     starting with an ‘_’.  Quoth
>     
> <[7]https://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/Reserved-Names.html>:
>
> The spirit of this rule is that names starting with _ are reserved
> for system libraries.
>
> GNU libraries are system libraries, so they should use _ for their
> internal names.  The developers should avoid real conflicts on GNU,
> and on non-GNU systems that they choose to support.  That includes
> coordinating with the libc developers when that is useful.

To me the only “system library” in this specific sense would be libc.

Concretely, there’s no discussion taking place between developers
GnuTLS, libguile, or the GNU Scientific Library and libc people before
picking a symbol.

I believe libc developers consider that *they* can pick one of these
reserved names (a famous example is names starting with capital E, which
has caused problems with applications defining ‘ED’, which libc already
defines to entertaining purposes.  :-))

Thanks,
Ludo’.