Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!att!emory!wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!helios!n025fc From: n025fc@tamuts.tamu.edu (Kevin Weller) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Subject: Re: long identifiers Message-ID: Date: 30 Oct 90 03:13:25 GMT References: <15953@csli.Stanford.EDU> <487@taumet.com> <15959@csli.Stanford.EDU> <272477A0.6845@tct.uucp> <1925@tuvie> <1990Oct25.182246.27505@nntp-server.caltech.edu> <1990Oct26.115021.6330@watmath.waterloo.edu> Sender: usenet@helios.TAMU.EDU Organization: Texas A&M University Lines: 40 In-reply-to: n025fc@tamuts.tamu.edu's message of 26 Oct 90 16:36:03 GMT In a mail response, datanguay@watmath.waterloo.edu (David Adrien Tanguay) writes: > > So you are claiming that Unix library assumptions are *not* a problem when > porting software to GCOS? I didn't think so :-) > > None the less, if you assume a Unix environment, then your software is not > portable. If you don't care, fine. It is generally fairly simple, however, > to isolate non-portable functionality into clearly marked system dependent > modules, which helps anybody who might someday attempt to port your software > to some non-Unix (non-Posix) system. > -- > David Tanguay Software Development Group, University of Waterloo That's not what I meant to say (my incomplete statements have struck again! :-). Like I told Mr. Davies, my programs assume they're running under UNIX, NOT that every machine runs UNIX (quite false). There are simply too many "standards" out there to support, so I choose a reasonable (IMHO) subset of them which covers many different hardware platforms (something no other operating system has done so successfully as UNIX). There are no absolute portability standards, as I'm sure you're well aware. Even if I choose to explicitly support UNIX in general, I undertake no small task, a direct consequence of the multiplicity of Unices out there. I realize now that I have indeed hidden many of the system dependencies in library functions simply as a result of modular programming practices, so we might say that I implicitly support other operating systems provided they have the same basic functionality as UNIX (it would be kind of hard to find the equivalent multitasking, multiuser, record-locking, etc., features under something as primitive as MS-DOS, for instance). I'm not familiar with GCOS (heck, I'd never even heard of it until your original post), but if it has these *essential* capabilities, then it should be easy to port, say, my C ISAM library there. I was in a situation similar to yours for several years when I was working under OS-9, Microware's multitasking, multiuser operating system for Motorola series CPU's, so I guess I can't really make myself insensitive in good conscience. -- Kev