Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!olivea!orc!inews!cmdnfs!bhoughto
From: bhoughto@cmdnfs.intel.com (Blair P. Houghton)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.programmer
Subject: Re: Why use U* over VMS
Message-ID: <812@inews.intel.com>
Date: 5 Nov 90 23:09:03 GMT
References: <803@inews.intel.com> <4283@lib.tmc.edu> <1990Nov5.191934.19739@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>
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I told you you knew what was coming! :-)

In article <1990Nov5.191934.19739@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> Ran Atkinson <randall@Virginia.EDU> writes:
>BTW, I agree with Jay that the POSIX standard is looser than it
>should be -- especially in the Shell & Tools area.  The fact
>that DEC plans a POSIX compliant VMS without a major overhaul
>is an excellent existence proof that the standard is too loose.

Did they say it wasn't a major overhaul?  EE Times
article on page 1 ("Digital to take RISC/Unix road",
Oct. 29, '90) (the title isn't actually descriptive; DEC's
still clinging to this dead baby (i.e., VMS) and hoping
someone will want to buy it; they claim tens thousand of
applications (most of them of course options to SET :-))
nd half a million installed systems) indicates little
about the actual effort.  DEC may have 20,000 or 2 people
working on it, for all anyone knows.

They call it an "open VMS".  What's that mean?  Beats me.

The time-frame is apparently _next_quarter_ (that's BEFORE
April of 1991, kids) for POSIX.1, .2, and .3 compliance.  The
rest of it is supposed to be out by "mid-1991."

As to whether it will handle pipes, I dare say it should!
But there I dare pretty far, not having read the
system-services section of POSIX (or any other section, for
that matter), but would it be Unix without pipes?  Heck, no!

				--Blair
				  "THIS, I gotta SEE!"

P.S. to Randall:  leave the cute 'Followup-to:' crap in
alt.flame.  Some of us are serious about this discussion.