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Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.development Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!foxhound.dsto.gov.au!fang.dsto.gov.au!yoyo.aarnet.edu.au!news.adelaide.edu.au!news.cs.su.oz.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!yeshua.marcam.com!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!swrinde!sgiblab!majipoor.cygnus.com!kithrup.com!sef From: sef@kithrup.com (Sean Eric Fagan) Subject: Re: Notes on the *new* FreeBSD V1.1 VM system Organization: Kithrup Enterprises, Ltd. References: <2l0b06$2qi@GRAPEVINE.LCS.MIT.EDU> <2l1ov4$m7o@germany.eu.net> <2l2mmf$me9@GRAPEVINE.LCS.MIT.EDU> <2l6i3n$rco@u.cc.utah.edu> Message-ID: <CM4Mq4.70D@kithrup.com> Date: Fri, 4 Mar 1994 06:15:25 GMT Lines: 23 In article <2l6i3n$rco@u.cc.utah.edu> terry@cs.weber.edu (Terry Lambert) writes: >Basically, POSIX is not the end-all, be-all of operating systems that >it was supposed to be. POSIX was never, *EVER* intended to be such. POSIX is nothing more than a set of interfaces, and semantics, that allow a programmer to write a useful program that is portable among any compliant system. POSIX is lacking a lot of things that a lot of people would like; a lot of the problems with it, however, are currently (in my opinion, and I actually get to have an opinion that counts about this :)) due to people trying to extend POSIX beyond what it was originally intended. (vi is in 1003.2, for example; this is STUPID. All a programmer needs to care about is whether commands used in shell scripts are portable, just as all a programmer needs to know about is whether the API he or she is writing to is portable.) POSIX is not an operating system. POSIX is an interface to an operating system. It is not necessarily the only interface to any given OS. But, then, it was never intended to be.