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Comments on What is the purpose of having underscored names and then defining a non-underscored alias to it?

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What is the purpose of having underscored names and then defining a non-underscored alias to it?

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In a C implementation in <stdio.h> on Linux I saw something like:

extern FILE *__stdinp;
extern FILE *__stdoutp;
extern FILE *__stderrp;

And then:

#define stdin __stdinp
#define stdout __stdoutp
#define stderr __stderrp

My question is, for what reason would an implementation provide the __name items and then create aliases to them instead of just providing the canonical name to begin with?

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Can't really be answered (1 comment)
Can't really be answered
Lundin‭ wrote 12 months ago

This requires digging into the specific library implementation - you don't mention which one - in search of a rationale or naming conventions. Without knowing that, the question cannot be answered. Though open source code bases in general tend to be quite irrationally written and do not necessarily follow a decent, formalized coding standard.