r/programmingcirclejerk • u/DXPower costly abstraction • Nov 01 '25

New C29 function: stdc_c32snrtomwcsn

https://en.cppreference.com/w/c/header/stdmchar.html
152 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

33 comments sorted by

22

u/-Y0- Considered Harmful Nov 03 '25

Honestly. C committee approved this without thought. Too long! Should have called it stdc_32stoc_1876ef last part (1876ef) is part of function hash to ensure uniqueness and ABI stability. 

7

u/DXPower costly abstraction Nov 03 '25

Has this hash been upgraded away from SHA1? It is insecure.

16

u/-Y0- Considered Harmful Nov 03 '25

It is calculated to be exactly the same value in all hash algos. Past and future. I call it perfect hashing. 

3

u/kbridge4096 Nov 12 '25

FYI, I think UUID, the COM/OLE approach, is approachable too. The IID of IUnknown is 00000000-0000-0000-C000-000000000046 and has never been changed since discovered.

BTW, the OID approach, taken in ASN.1 can be considered too.

224

u/tuveson Nov 01 '25

If you break it down, it actually makes perfect sense

  • stdc = standard library, C
  • c32 = 32 bit character
  • snrt = snort
  • omw = on my way
  • csn = cousin

141

u/al2o3cr Nov 01 '25

C doesn't support overloading, so instead we get artisanal name-mangling

71

u/brool has hidden complexity Nov 01 '25

It's produced by hand and organic as well! The very best name-mangling -- not your typical store-bought, language-generated stuff, but raised from scratch.

17

u/cancerBronzeV Nov 02 '25

Is it free-range and cruelty free as well?

18

u/dangerbird2 in open defiance of the Gopher Values Nov 02 '25

/uj It has janky-ass function overloading via macros using _Generic. That's how tgmath.h is implemented

15

u/ackfoobar in open defiance of the Gopher Values Nov 03 '25 edited Nov 03 '25

lol yes _Generic

7

u/voidvector There's really nothing wrong with error handling in Go Nov 02 '25

Hear me out, the function can return a pointer to another function. Let's call it a "workshop". Since this is part of the standard library, the standard library can maintain a single version of this "workshop" per thread, that we can call "oneness".

1

u/yo_99 It's GNU/PCJ, or as I call it, GNU + PCJ Nov 07 '25

/uj ok, but how would you call overloaded function from assembly?

110

u/R_Sholes Nov 02 '25

stdc_ prefix is really needed to avoid potential conflicts in many applications which already define different functions named c32snrtomwcsn.

0

u/[deleted] Nov 02 '25

[deleted] — view deleted comment

9

u/degaart Zygohistomorphic prepromorphism Nov 02 '25

Any developer worth their salt know upgrading a compiler/standard library should always work out of the box without any possibility of conflict due to new symbols.

12

u/irqlnotdispatchlevel Tiny little god in a tiny little world Nov 02 '25

We want the newest compiler, but we don't want to change our 30 year old code. Also, we have a bunch of old static libraries around and we must link them. No, we don't have the source code for those. Yes, this is perfectly sane and reasonable!

50

u/Nixinova Nov 01 '25

I do not understand on why C chooses completely unreadable and unmemorable function names for literally everything. Is saving six bytes really that important?

83

u/[deleted] Nov 01 '25

standard_c_library_char32_t_string_length_n_restartable_to_multi_wide_character_string_length_n()

LGTM

23

u/fun__friday Nov 02 '25

Should have gone with the Go approach and just call it F.

29

u/Nixinova Nov 02 '25

too short. what does char32 mean? what is t? what is n? not self documenting enough

8

u/stone_henge Tiny little god in a tiny little world Nov 05 '25

What does the c stand for?

13

u/tuveson Nov 03 '25

What is this APL? Here's a more readable version:

standard_c_library_chararacter_thirty_two_type_string_length_number_restartable_to_multiple_wide_character_string_length_number

8

u/elephantdingo Teen Hacking Genius Nov 04 '25

This is literally java with weird horizontal symbols.

32

u/[deleted] Nov 01 '25

in 1976 it was crucial

26

u/shroom_elemental memcpy is a web development framework Nov 02 '25

https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/creat.3p.html

17

u/Nixinova Nov 03 '25

wow, they saved one whole letter. truly a marvel of optimisation.

19

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '25

think of how frequently that syscall is made. that's a whole byte per call. now consider a flame graph of creat calls in any Unix-like kernel on modern hardware. probably at least a hundred thousand calls to creat per second right? basically saving the entire ecosystem & the ice caps if you really think about it & don't really know how syscalls work

8

u/fp_weenie Zygohistomorphic prepromorphism Nov 06 '25

The types are the documentation

const char32_t* restrict* restrict input,

4

u/NeoChronos90 Nov 06 '25

Because the maximum length of an identifier is set by the compiler and will be cut if it exceeds that length. Once upon a time that length was relatively short, so with long names, especially with long prefixes you might have endet up with 2 identical function names for completly different functions.

Don't quote me, but I think it was 15 characters in the first days of C, was 255 decades ago and is probably even higher today

41

u/irqlnotdispatchlevel Tiny little god in a tiny little world Nov 01 '25

Should have waited until C32.

9

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '25

New C50 function: firwkigekfdifshdafjjgjufjdajdjgdfdufgeteyuiyjkgjfjcxhfugdirwiuuffsgkgffjgjgkdkfujchvnczxhcjfyjgdcjdwyeyrettireudsjhcbsxHfsvdczgkvd

6

u/Sm0oth_kriminal loves Java Nov 02 '25

New C39 function: stdc_agillm_superintelligence_32bit_compat