Xref: utzoo comp.sources.bugs:2266 comp.lang.perl:593
Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!robohack!eci386!clewis
From: clewis@eci386.uucp (Chris Lewis)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.bugs,comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: perl 3.0 patch #9 (thru 12)
Message-ID: <1990Mar6.223913.8337@eci386.uucp>
Date: 6 Mar 90 22:39:13 GMT
References: <7238@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Reply-To: clewis@eci386.UUCP (Chris Lewis)
Organization: Elegant Communications Inc., Toronto, Canada
Lines: 40

In article <7238@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall) writes:
> System: perl version 3.0
> Patch #: 9
> Priority: HIGH

> Subject: libBSD.a and libPW.a are now supported

I'm not sure what libBSD.a is supposed to contain, but I think it's
a big mistake to include libPW.a by default...  

libPW.a (I seem to recall) is a set of routines for continued
support of code that used PWB Unix libraries way back in the
stone age (how old does it make me? ;-) and/or "accidentally"
matched the names and functionality of more recent BSD functionality. 
Eg: alloca(), rename() etc.  As far as I can tell, libPW functions are 
not specifically documented in *any* current SV documentation and are 
not supported by many system vendors (in fact, some of the more grungy ones
often don't work on different platforms - like alloca).  rename() for
example, isn't documented in SVID (vol 1..3) nor the appropriate
Programmer's Reference for our system (SVR3).

Gawd only knows what some of the other routines in libPW.a do...

I built PL12 on 386/ix, and had the fatal() clash as mentioned elsewhere.
I then editted Makefile (to shorten rebuild time) and the link complained
about "rename()" not found.  So, I rebuilt from scratch after omitting
-lPW (at the Configure prompt), and all worked fine.  (well... haven't
tested it yet - later ;-)

Thus, in my case, the only function found in libPW.a that was of use
to Perl was rename().  Our kernel doesn't support a "rename" system call,
and rename would have to do link()/unlink()/link() anyways (which Perl
already supports if RENAME undef'd).  So, at least in my case, looking 
in libPW.a was really a waste of time.

Are there any other functions that perl's using from other people's libPW.a?
-- 
Chris Lewis, Elegant Communications Inc, {uunet!attcan,utzoo}!lsuc!eci386!clewis
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