Ballot 4 - results (really POSIX / X3J11 relationship)

Robert Elz seismo!munnari!kre
Sun May 3 22:13:03 UTC 1987


There should be very little overlap between X3J11 and POSIX.  If
there is, then at least one of these bodies should reconsider its
purposes to remove that.

Some small degree of overlap might be impossible to avoid, but it
should certainly be minimized.

X3J11 are standardising the C languale (or creating a new one, depending
on your point of view).  POSIX are standardising the operating system
interface.

These are two different functions.. an X3J11 C implementation should
be able to be made on VMS, VM/CMS, PRIMEOS, ... thus X3J11 cannot
possibly set about standardising the operating system interface,
only the C programmers (higher level) functions.  Thus they can
standardise fopen, but not open.

POSIX (P1003.1) on the other hand should enable the programmer to work in C,
Pascal, Ada, PL/I, Fortran, Modula, Occam, Prolog, ...  What's important
is the capabilities of the system (the file system, time keeping, signals,
etc).  These things don't depend on the language, regardless of their
effects being expresed in (some random dialect of) the C language at
the present time.

kre

ps: this discussion really belongs in comp.std.unix, not elsie!tz, perhaps
someone should forward it there?



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