Re: Ada & Posix

[billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu (William Thomas Wolfe, 2847 )]

From mjl@cs.rit.edu:
> Actually, both Unix and Ada are products of the 1970's.  The difference
> is that Unix, being primarily of commercial interest, has been able to
> evolve, 

   Thus generating the need for the POSIX effort.  Ada, on the 
   other hand, standardized itself to start with.  Furthermore, 
   its definition was frozen for ten years precisely in order to
   provide vendors with the ability to amortize their investments
   over that period of time.  Ada has always had its portability,
   whereas Unix is just now struggling to achieve it.

   Now that Unix is finally standardizing, work is also in progress
   (in the IEEE 1003.5 committee) to develop a standardized Ada binding
   to the IEEE 1003.1 POSIX standard.  From AlsyNews, September 1989:

      Ada applications will have a major portability advantage
      over C applications because Ada's strong typing will assure
      that an application accesses only the services that are in
      the POSIX packages.  A C application might inadvertently mix
      portable POSIX services with non-portable services provided
      by the local operating system.

   A full IEEE ballot on the Ada binding to POSIX is expected by year-end.


   Bill Wolfe, wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu