Re: Why no socket package in the standard ?

[Ludovic Brenta <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org>]

Shark8 wrote on comp.lang.ada:
> On May 24, 6:35 pm, Ludovic Brenta <ludo...@ludovic-brenta.org> wrote:
>> Yannick Duchêne writes on comp.lang.ada:
>>> By the way, there is not event something like a standard OS (there may
>>> be proprietaries or not, but none is standard).
>>
>> POSIX is a standard.  A POSIX-compliant OS is a standard OS.  An OS that
>> refuses to comply with POSIX, or any other standard, is non-standard.
>>
>> Even MVS aka z/OS is standard in that sense.
>
> And, it is useful/instructive to realize that just because something
> is a [part of a] standard does NOT mean that standard requires/says
> anything useful.

The reason why I mentioned POSIX is because the OP declared BSD
sockets to be "the standard" and wanted this included in the Ada
language definition.  POSIX is "the standard" as far as sockets are
concerned and POSIX.5 is "the standard Ada socket interface".  But you
are right; just because someone wants sockets in Ada does not mean
that sockets are necessarily the best solution, or even useful at all,
for the problem at hand.

> This was something I learned from a mathematics professor (though
> about 'definitions' rather than 'standards') and is important enough
> that it should be remembered from time-to-time.
>
> {IIRC as far as POSIX is concerned, MS Windows has been POSIX
> complaint since 2000... and this says NOTHING about how portable
> binaries (or their sources) are between Windows and unix/linux
> computers.}

Actually it does; POSIX is all about source compatibility.  Of course,
if you want source compatibility, your application must comply with
the standard, i.e. not use any non-standard features (i.e. you can use
sockets but no GUI for example).  This brings us back to the question
of the usefulness of a particular standard for a particular problem.

--
Ludovic Brenta.