Parts ^W Linux is Linux

Chip Salzenberg (chip@perlsupport.com)
Wed, 28 Oct 1998 15:41:07 -0500

According to Trever Adams:
> Is Linux Linux? Or are we going to pull a Linux is Linux but this and
> that syscall are not available on this or that platform so developers
> need to know which platform they are on?

You ought to check over the syscall lists for various architectures.
They're not as unified as you seem to think.

> [If] you are going to have a major syscall on several platforms (I
> imagine Sparc/UltraSparc isn't the only one), you need to have it on
> all.

Not necessarily. Sometimes libc is the right place for that kind of
adaptation:

int
getpagesize()
{
#ifdef i386
return 4096;
#else
return sys_getpagesize();
#endif
}

That said ... I happen to like sysconf() infinitely more than a unique
system call for just one system characteristic.

-- 
Chip Salzenberg               - a.k.a. -              <chip@perlsupport.com>
 "... under cover of afternoon in the biggest car in the county?!" //MST3K


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