gethostname (Was: SunAda question)

[leviticus!karl@uunet.uu.net (Karl A. Nyberg)]

In article <9307202026.aa28700@Paris.ics.uci.edu> kanderso@mabillon.ICS.UCI.EDU
 (Kenneth Anderson) writes:

>Frankly, I'm offended!  This completely violates everything that I've
>been taught about Ada functions! The actual parameters of a function
>should not be modified.  A function should only return one value.
>
>Wow, this is ugly! (Me thinks me smells a C programmer lurking
>                    behind that "function"...)
>
>Thanks again to Keith, Karl, and Tim for their help... I'll use gethostname
>but I don't have to like it...

You're confusing languages with operating systems.  What you want to say is
that you'll use UNIX, but you don't have to like it.  The UNIX system call
could be rewritten to be more "pure", in terms of your mathematical notion
of what a function should do, but I wouldn't hold my breath...

-- Karl --

p.s. again - look at what the POSIX standard says.  I'll bet the P1003.5
guys have done a better job at this.  Right, Dave?


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