Also, I don’t think there is anything in the C, respectively C++ standards that forbids, respectively requires name mangling. Linking isn’t specified in either standard.

C++ implementations have name mangling because they live on systems designed for C, which don’t allow symbols such as int max(int,int)

C implementations (would) need name mangling if they ran on a system that used case-insensitive comparisons on symbol names, or on ones whose character set is smaller than that allowed in C symbols (I know examples of neither, but Wikipedia has an example that encodes the calling convention in the symbol name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_mangling#C)

The table in that article shows how different compilers mange very similarly but not the same! This is something that could be standardized for the benefit of all.

Not quite. You would know what to call, but not how to call it. That would require full ABI compatibility, and C++’s is complex. https://isocpp.org/wiki/faq/compiler-dependencies#binary-com...:

”If name mangling was standardized, could I link code compiled with compilers from different compiler vendors?

Short answer: Probably not.”

(click link for more info)

> Probably not.

yet the real life answer is that I can link C++ code built with three different compiler on linux (gcc / clang / icc) and three / two on windows (clang / cl.exe / icc or clang / gcc)

Thanks for the info. I'm just a C/C++ user. There has to be way to workout a convention for all those options.