Re: Standard Library Interest?

[Mark Lorenzen <mark.lorenzen@ofir.dk>]

chris <spamoff.danx@ntlworld.com> writes:

> sk wrote:
>> chris <spamoff.danx@ntlworld.com>:
>>  > IIRC there's an implementation *relating to* the OS
>>  > interfacing component somewhere, right?  AdaDirectories
>>  > or something?
>> More than just Ada.Directories, there are the POSIX
>> bindings !
>
> I know about them but don't use them...  Out of interest, what does
> posix give a programmer besides directory control that Ada doesn't
> provide out of the box?
>

I wonder if I am reading your question correct... There is *a lot*
more to POSIX than what is supported out-of-the-box in Ada!

Think of all the typical "things" you associate with a Unix system:
Processes, signals, sockets, message queues, shared memory, user
accounts, terminals, file locking, memory locking, memory mapping,
file permissions, event handling, process group leader, controlling
terminal, job control, session control etc. The Ada standard does (of
course) not define any means of handling these "things".

> My understanding of posix is that it was defined to provide an api the
> lowest common functionality common to the two big Unices of the day,
> but other than that I haven't explored it in detail.

I would not say the "lowest common functionality". It is a pretty
large part of The Open Group's definition of Unix.

If you want to do some serious development for the Unix platform,
then POSIX is an absolute necessity.

- Mark