Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!nosc!ucsd!ames!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!husc6!spdcc!ima!haddock!karl
From: karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Getchar w/wout echo
Message-ID: <7196@haddock.ima.isc.com>
Date: 8 Sep 88 21:57:05 GMT
References: <733@ncrcce.StPaul.NCR.COM> <7070@cdis-1.uucp> <739@ncrcce.StPaul.NCR.COM>
Reply-To: karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Organization: Interactive Systems, Boston
Lines: 15

mercer@ncrcce.StPaul.NCR.COM (Dan Mercer) writes:
>To expect portability across different hardware and operating system
>architectures, however, just because you write in 'C', stretches the meaning
>of portability.  One shouldn't expect the programming language to usurp the
>role of an operating system, or expect the interface of the language to the
>operating system to be the same in all instances.

Why not?  That's exactly what stdio does, for example.  And several other
system functions (rename(), remove()) are now part of the standard library
which must be provided with every ANSI C implementation.

On the other hand, fork() is not and should not be part of ANSI C.  So I think
the real question is whether it's *possible* to standardize a reasonable form
of raw I/O interface.  If so, I don't see any obvious reason not to do it.

Karl W. Z. Heuer (ima!haddock!karl or karl@haddock.isc.com), The Walking Lint