From: johnrreagan@earthlink.net

On 9/5/2025 1:37 PM, Craig A. Berry wrote:
>
> On 9/5/25 6:55 AM, Waldek Hebisch wrote:
>
>> I now got to C++ problem.  In fact, this may be binutils problem:
>> gcc generates an assember file and as from binutils-2.21 aborts on
>> this file.  as from current binutils developement tree produces
>> error message instead:
>>
>> pom/kompi/gcc/binu-build3/gas/as-new -o array_type_info.obj
>> array_type_info.s
>> array_type_info.s: Assembler messages:
>> array_type_info.s: Error: no entry symbol for global function
>> '_ZN10__cxxabiv117__array_type_infoD1Ev'
>>
>> The offending function is defined in the following way:
>>
>>          .globl _ZN10__cxxabiv117__array_type_infoD1Ev
>>          _ZN10__cxxabiv117__array_type_infoD1Ev =
>> _ZN10__cxxabiv117__array_type_infoD2Ev
>>
>> If I delete this definition and the ony use of it the file assembles OK.
>> AFAICS this means that _ZN10__cxxabiv117__array_type_infoD2Ev is
>> correctly
>> defined.
>
> Note that this symbol is 38 characters long.  The native VMS toolchain
> traditionally limits itself to 31-character symbols and uses a checksum
> to shorten symbols that are longer.  The linker, the librarian, and the
> inertia of existing code are all things I've heard blamed for this state
> of affairs.
>
> I have no idea whether the tools you are using require or are capable of
> observing the 31-character limit.  If some parts do and other parts
> don't, that could obviously cause trouble, and of course you've got the
> C++ name mangler in the mix as well.
>
> If you need an open source name shortener that mimics what the DEC
> compilers do, I've got one here:
>
>  vms_shorten_symbol.c>

On ELF-based systems, the linker doesn't care about symbol length
anymore.  You can easily have symbols with 1000s of characters
(including non-printing ones).  The librarian can handle longer names as
well, but you have to pick a max-length when creating the OLB.  The
default may not be large enough for you.  ANALYZE is ok with longer
lengths but we recently fixed a bug dumping out a symbol vector with
very long names in LIBCXX.  I think the debugger is ok, but you then
have to deal with command line length if you want to do a SET BREAK on a
very long C++ mangled name.

Only C/C++ have that checksum solution.  Other compilers, like Pascal,
won't let you go beyond 31.

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