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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!bunyip.cc.uq.oz.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!yeshua.marcam.com!MathWorks.Com!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!news.Brown.EDU!noc.near.net!hopscotch.ksr.com!jfw From: jfw@ksr.com (John F. Woods) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.development Subject: Re: Notes on the *new* FreeBSD V1.1 VM system Date: 9 Mar 1994 19:32:03 GMT Organization: Kendall Square Research Lines: 30 Message-ID: <2ll87j$440@hopscotch.ksr.com> References: <2l2mmf$me9@GRAPEVINE.LCS.MIT.EDU> <2l6i3n$rco@u.cc.utah.edu> <CM4Mq4.70D@kithrup.com> <hastyCMAA6J.9DH@netcom.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: kaos.ksr.com hasty@netcom.com (Amancio Hasty Jr) writes: >In article <CM4Mq4.70D@kithrup.com> sef@kithrup.com (Sean Eric Fagan) writes: >>In article <2l6i3n$rco@u.cc.utah.edu> terry@cs.weber.edu (Terry Lambert) writes: <>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. <The above is true however if the programmer finds itself using local >interfaces to accomplish the functionality not cover by posix then <what good is it? If programmers find that they must use non-posix local interfaces in every single program they write, no matter how trivial the program, then posix is of absolutely no use. If programmers find that they can write substantial, interesting programs using only posix interfaces, then they can write those programs using only posix interfaces and have them run on any arbitrary OS which provides a posix interface; this is true regardless of how many other substantial, interesting programs may require non-posix functionality. It is a victory for posix that "tar" can be written using only posix interfaces. _Given that_, it is *not* a defeat that "fsck" cannot.* If programmers reach for non-posix interfaces to write programs that could be written using only posix interfaces, then they'd best have a very, very good reason for doing so, unless they (or their customers) forever forswear the purchase of computer systems from vendors other than the one they buy from now. * I assume it can't. Maybe it can, I haven't got a strong enough stomach to look at fsck... ;-)