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Date: 20 Jul 93 20:38:43 GMT
From: ucivax!gateway@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU  (Kenneth Anderson)
Subject: SunAda question
Message-ID: <9307201338.aa20178@Paris.ics.uci.edu>
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

Hello.  I am using the sunada-1.1 compiler and it came with a package
unix defined in its standard library.  One of the subprograms defined
in the package unix is

        function gethostname(name: address; namelen: integer)
                return status_code;

As defined this function seems very useless.  It will only tell you whether
or not the call to gethostname was successful.  It will not tell you,
despite its name, what the hostname is.

Two questions:

  1. Anyone know why such a useless function would be included in
     this package?

  2. What is a good portable way of finding out the name of the machine
     your program is running on?

Thanks in advance,

Ken Anderson