Re: GCC to open the C++ demangle API?

[Joe Buck <Joe dot Buck at synopsys dot com>]

> >  http://www.codesourcery.com/cxx-abi/abi.html#mangling

Andrew Marlow writes:
> This does not appear to be a standard to me. 
> I would call it a documented convention for the Itanium environment.
> I do like the documentation though, especially the use of BNF.
> Thankyou for drawing my attention to this. If only this would be adopted
> by ISO.

This is not in the scope of the ISO C++ standard.  The only reason we
need name mangling is so that we can use traditional C-oriented assembers
and linkers, and freezing issues of object layout would degrade
performance on future processors.

These kinds of things will probably be done in the future in a specific
way for each distinct processor/OS-group combination (where "OS-group"
is a group of similar operating systems), except where barriers exist
(for example, Microsoft has patented certain aspects of its C++ object
layout).