illegal alias attribute vs ia64 asm_output_labelref

[J. Johnston]

Richard Henderson wrote:
> 
> http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2001-07/msg00349.html
> 
> This patch broke handling @ and * at the same time in the ia64
> ASM_OUTPUT_LABELREF, which meant that some c++ variables would
> get mangled during output to contain a leading * character.
> 
> I wish I'd looked at the reason for this patch when it went in.
> On the face of it it makes no sense -- we're being called to
> emit a label, not an expression.  How could there possibly be
> a plus sign embedded?
> 
> The answer is this little gem from newlib:
> 
> extern _CONST char _ctype_[1 + 256] __attribute__ ((alias ("_ctype_b+127")));
> 
> This is illegal code.  The argument to the alias attribute is
> a symbol name, not an expression.  That it happens to work for
> some targets is immaterial.  And before you ask, no, there is
> no way to do what you want.  Your best bet is to either push
> ALLOW_NEGATIVE_CTYPE_INDEX into ctype.h and adjust the expressions
> therein or use __ctype_ptr and ignore _ctype_ entirely.
> 
> r~
> 

My preference has always been to switch to a ctype pointer.  The code above 
was done to prevent the ctype.h header file from changing due to back-level
compatiblity concerns with Cygwin users.

Both of your proposed solutions require changing ctype.h and breaking Cygwin 
back-level compatibility.  This being the case, it makes sense to switch to the 
pointer mechanism which has potential benefits for locale support.

Cygwin maintainers: any alternative we haven't thought of or can I make the
change?

-- Jeff J.