Re: System Calls

[dennison@telepath.com]

In article <75tmgp$bjf@top.mitre.org>,
  mfb@mbunix.mitre.org (Michael F Brenner) wrote:

> Since DOS and UNIX and VAXen are so similar in their ideas of what a
> subdirectory is and what happens when executables are spawned, it
> seems that the basic commands like change directory, rename directory,
> move directory, copy directory, get current directory, concatenate

The problem is in the little differences. Dos uses '\', where Unix and VMS
use '/'. In Unix that '\' is quite liable to be used in the file name to
escape special characters. In DOS, devices are at the front of the path with
a ':'. In Unix devices are simply the first path or two in the filename. In
Unix and VMS '::' can be used to indicate the machine owning the device in
some circumstances. In Unix disks must be mounted before use. In DOS and
Windows, they are generally automaticly detected.

Of course the scripting languages have to deal with these very issues, and
have each come up with their own partial solutions.

> directory to filename, run an executable in parallel, run an executable
> in series, put message into shared memory, wait for program,
> terminate, minimize, get mouse coordinates, get interrupt on
> key down or key up or mouse button down or up, light up filled
> rectangle on the screen, read the color of a pixel, rename a file,
> wait for executable, peek/poke, get/put/seek to ordinary
> operating system files, parse filename, etc., could be standardized
> without pain in a little operating system-independent package.

I notice your list is quite long. That genrally means it is not
comprehensive. :-) Any package that contained all this stuff would be far
from little. Plus large parts of it are unrelated. Yuk. You are talking about
at least 8 different packages here. Some of it is doable, but I doubt a
graphics package that just provided the graphics function you mention would
be useful to anyone. Start adding many more functions, and you might as well
just implement a TCL binding.

--
T.E.D.

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