Prefixing C function names with ‘_’

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello,

I just noticed this recommendation from
<https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Libraries.html>:

  External symbols that are not documented entry points for the user
  should have names beginning with ‘_’.

I think this is bad advice because both POSIX and glibc reserve names
starting with an ‘_’.  Quoth
<https://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/Reserved-Names.html>:

  […] reserved names include all external identifiers (global functions
  and variables) that begin with an underscore (‘_’) and all identifiers
  regardless of use that begin with either two underscores or an
  underscore followed by a capital letter are reserved names.

Thus I suggest removing this sentence and possibly proposing a different
convention.  Guile uses ‘scm_’ for public functions and ‘scm_i_’ for
internal functions; some libraries use two underscores, as in ’lib__’.

Thoughts?

Ludo’.