[Info-vax] Viable versus ideal programming languages

[Dan Cross]

In article <623ddf93$0$697$14726298 at news.sunsite.dk>,
Arne Vajhøj  <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>On 3/25/2022 10:52 AM, Dan Cross wrote:
>> That is NOT true.  There's pretty much one that every has
>> standardized on now, and it is well-specified.  It "changes over
>> time" in the same way that any ABI changes over time: new things
>> are added as languages etc evolve, but the baseline behavior is
>> durable.
>
>I thought Rust RFC 2603 changed Rust name mangling??

RFC 2603 hasn't been approved; the tracking issue is very much
still open.

>>> Which is why disabling it is a good thing for language
>>> interop.
>> 
>> We're now at the point of arguing semantics.  I gave an example
>> where one does not _need_ to disable it; that's all.
>
>But the example was not really language interop as the Rust
>compiler did the name mangling for the inline assembler.

Semantics.

>>                                                      Strictly
>> speaking, it is not necessary to disable mangling for interop;
>
>True.
>
>One can always find the mangled name either by applying documentation or 
>by looking at generated code. But that is not good way to code.

That's a value judgement.

>> whether one wants to for other reasons (readability) or
>> considers it a good idea in general is orthogonal.
>
>But really the interesting/relevant part.
>
>Lots of things are possible. You don't need a compiler
>to create a program. It is potentially possible to type
>in an EXE file in a hex editor. But nobody would do that.

That's a separate discussion.  If you want to have that
discussion, that's fine; I agree with you.  But that's not
the discussion we were having (which was about possiblity,
or at least that's what I thought).

>I hope nobody expose mangled names for external
>calling either.

Separate compilation is a good thing, even within a single
language.

	- Dan C.