Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!hybrid!scifi!bywater!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!jsq
From: rml@hpfcdc.fc.hp.com (Bob Lenk)
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: Re: Finding physical memory size
Message-ID: <16874@cs.utexas.edu>
Date: 7 Jan 91 22:23:23 GMT
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Submitted-by: rml@hpfcdc.fc.hp.com (Bob Lenk)

In article <16480@cs.utexas.edu>, jgd@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (John G Dobnick) writes:

>    Was consideration given to including some mechanism to retrieve
>    hardware configuration information via 'standard' means?

Not much.  Remember that the purpose of POSIX.1 was to define interfaces
for portable applications.  There is little if any use that a portable
application can make of such information.

Through the trial use standard (1986) there was an appendix (Appendix H)
requiring each system to supply some such information off-line.  That
appendix was dropped in the first draft following trial use; the
portions deemed useful were made available via interfaces like
sysconf(), pathconf(), <limits.h>, and <unistd.h>.

		Bob Lenk
		rml@fc.hp.com
		{uunet,hplabs}!fc.hp.com!rml

Volume-Number: Volume 22, Number 65