Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!att!emory!samsung!cs.utexas.edu!helios!n025fc
From: n025fc@tamuts.tamu.edu (Kevin Weller)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: long identifiers
Message-ID: <N025FC.90Oct29210704@tamuts.tamu.edu>
Date: 30 Oct 90 03:07:04 GMT
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In-reply-to: n025fc@tamuts.tamu.edu's message of 26 Oct 90 16:36:03 GMT


In a mail response, jrbd@craycos.com (James Davies) writes:
> I'm afraid you did misunderstand.  The "this system" mentioned in the
> original quote was NOT a Unix system, but a CP-6 system.  If you reflect
> on your response, you might begin to understand why these library
> assumptions are a problem (i.e. lots of people think the way you
> expressed it, assuming that all the world IS a Unix system.  Sorry,
> but it isn't.)
>						Jim Davies
>						jrbd@craycos.com
>
> p.s.  In fact, it would probably be closer to the truth to say
> "most of the world's an MS-DOS system".  Sad, but true.

Whoops!  Looks like my post was too concise, i.e., open for
interpretation.  I did not mean to imply that "all the world IS a
UNIX," only that my programs assume UNIX for any system on which they
run.  This obviously means that they simply won't run on a great many
existing machines, certainly a problem for those wishing to run them
on non-UNIX systems.  As regards MS-DOS, you're right again, although
I might point out that UNIX makes for a more "portable" environment in
the qualitative sense (it runs on many different processors in systems
of many different sizes and configurations).

-- Kev