C++ name mangling for local entities

[Mark Mitchell]

>> we should add a feature to the assembler like:
>>
>>    .asm_alias x = y
>>
>> that says references to "x" are emitted as references to a new "y", 
>> distinct from all other "y" references. 
> 
> On Darwin, all the DWARF information in .o files is matched by name¹ 
> with symbols in the executable, so this won't work. 

In that case, on Darwin, the assembler could leave the name "x" as "x", 
so that all the names in the object file were unique.  Since this is 
only for local symbols, there's no ABI impact, as you mentioned.  Then, 
we'd have better behavior on ELF platforms and would not have to make 
any change to the C++ ABI.  You could use your suggested encoding in GCC 
as "x", but it would only show up in object files on systems that don't 
support multiple local symbols with the same name.

>> Now, with my C++ ABI hat on

>> That's true, but is there a reason not to use the discriminator 
>> encoding? 

> You mean
> 
> <local-source-name> ::= Z <source-name> <discriminator>
> 
> ?

Yes, that's what I meant.  I think that would be best, partly because it 
avoids having to reserve "L", but:

> <local-source-name> ::= L <source-name> <discriminator>
> 
> will work and is more consistent, so consider the proposal amended to 
> have that.

also seems OK, assuming that we need to do this at all.

-- 
Mark Mitchell
CodeSourcery
mark@codesourcery.com
(650) 331-3385 x713