*BSD News Article 33893


Return to BSD News archive

Xref: sserve comp.windows.x.i386unix:10972 comp.os.386bsd.apps:1335 comp.os.386bsd.questions:12093
Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!ihnp4.ucsd.edu!dog.ee.lbl.gov!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!swrinde!emory!cherry.atlanta.com!nntp.mindspring.com!usenet
From: rsanders@mindspring.com (Robert Sanders)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x.i386unix,comp.os.386bsd.apps,comp.os.386bsd.questions
Subject: Re: __NetBSD__ X11R6 i386
Date: 04 Aug 1994 03:11:46 GMT
Organization: MindSpring Enterprises, Inc.
Lines: 19
Message-ID: <RSANDERS.94Aug3231148@hrothgar.mindspring.com>
References: <deeken.775902001@iti.informatik.th-darmstadt.de>
	<31nqad$mii@news.rhrz.uni-bonn.de> <31olij$61a@news.rhrz.uni-bonn.de>
	<31p2sr$ikj@u.cc.utah.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: hrothgar.mindspring.com
In-reply-to: terry@cs.weber.edu's message of 3 Aug 1994 21:40:43 GMT


> In POSIX proper, it is not possible to do anything to the file size
> through a defined interface (other than to ask what it is).  This is
> one of the many deficiencies of the specification, and why you really
> couldn't write a working OS to the spec (remind me to see what Linux
> does about file truncation and extension -- one would expect it to do
> nothing).

Like every other Unix or Unix clone, Linux is a superset of POSIX.
Linux implements truncate() and ftruncate() and they do the normal
things that truncates do.

When people say that Linux was written from scratch to conform to
POSIX, they aren't implying that Linux is *only* POSIX or it wasn't
written to conform to existing non-POSIX practice when it was deemed
necessary.  Linux also has setreuid(), mmap(), shm*, etc. and a few
non-standard syscalls of its own.

  -- Robert