Re: libelf

[der Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>]

>> E.g. consider libcurses, which re-exports libc's FILE * type.
> In the particular example you cite, all of the problems can be
> eliminated by simply making FILE * a truly opaque type and hiding all
> of the internals behind real accessors / mutators, rather than the
> pseudo-opacity we have now (where the guts are actually exposed in
> header files and manipulated by macros).

No, that wouldn't fix the problem; it would just expose it differently
(in an arguably less often problematic way, but still).  It would
permit redesigns of FILE's internals only when they still preserve the
under-the-hood accessors used by stdio.

To really fix it, FILE would have to become truly opaque, without
accessors/mutators except for stdio-exported interfaces.  This would
impair performance, of course....

> Again, this is something that could, in theory, be addressed within
> the framework of ELF.

Sure.  But, heck, ELF itself could in theory be addressed within the
a.out framework.  It's not about what's possible in theory, but what's
convenient in practice.

>> Apparently so. There's no "format: flowed" in the headers here, or
>> whatever the precise notation is, and there should be.
> Weird.  I wonder if the @netbsd.org mailing lists are stripping it
> out... or I wonder if my Mail app isn't putting it there in the first
> place.  I'm using a different version of Mail to send this one, so
> let's see if it's any different.

I got "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii" and paragraph-length
lines, for what that's worth.  (Reflowed manually in the quotes above.)

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