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From: karish@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Chuck Karish)
Subject: Re: ANSI C and POSIX (was Re: C/C++ knocks the crap out of Ada)
Date: 1996/04/12
Message-ID: <4kkdv4$ik4@nntp.Stanford.EDU>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 147026006
references: <JSA.96Feb16135027@organon.com> <dewar.828757752@schonberg>
 <828825929snz@genesis.demon.co.uk> <dewar.828846122@schonberg>
organization: Mindcraft, Inc.
newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.edu
Date: 1996-04-12T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

In article <dewar.828846122@schonberg>, Robert Dewar <dewar@cs.nyu.edu> wrote:
>"Well, POSIX is IEEE standard 1003. I don't think SPEC1170 and XPG are
>national/international standards but are something you have to conform to
>if you want to call your OS UNIX(tm).
>"
>
>This is plain wrong! There are lots of unixes out there that call themselves
>UNIX and do not conform exactly to SPEC1170.

Not wrong, just incomplete.  The trade mark owner (X/Open) has
stated the requirements for use of the word.  This includes,
for new systems, demonstration of conformance to the requirements
of the XPG4 UNIX profile, a formalization of Spec 1170.  There
are special arrangements for vendors met the requirements for use of
the UNIX name under agreements with previous owners of the trade
mark (AT&T, USL, Novell).

>Consider for example, also answering your question about ANSI being
>a misleadng guide to portability, the return type of sprintf. I don't
>have SPEC1170 on hand, but it is a good guess that it is ANSI compliant
>here (return type int), but BSD heritage unices (like SunOS) return
>char *.

The list of interesting UNIX-like porting targets that don't
support both Standard C and POSIX.1 gets shorter every year.
I don't feel guilty at all calling code portable even though
I know it would not compile on a Version 7 UNIX system.

>"have to conform to"
>
>and prey who enforces this rule?

The market, ultimately.
--

    Chuck Karish          karish@mindcraft.com
    (415) 323-9000 x117   karish@pangea.stanford.edu