VAX VMS C / UNIX C Compatibility -- Need Info

Chris Shaw cdshaw at watmum.UUCP
Mon Aug 12 15:05:53 AEST 1985


In article <488 at rdin.UUCP> perl at rdin.UUCP (Robert Perlberg) writes:
>Is the VAX VMS C-compiler compatible with UNIX?  That is, can I take
>C files that compiled under UNIX and compile them under VMS with no
>changes other than the shell commands inside of system() calls? A guy
>in my office says that to hope for this is naive at best, but I thought
>that this ability was supposed to be a feature of C.
>

I tried porting Kermit from UNIX to VMS once, and it was a real bother..
all to do with system dependencies (tty names, etc) AND the way I/O
was handled.

VMS is very record-ish, while stream i/o is the unix thing. Unfortunately,
port didn't work because we didn't really spend the effort required to do
the QIO's required to fake stream i/o on VMS. Other than that, porting is
reasonably ok, but it was the terminal-driver part of the code that really
made us chew steel wool.

Chris Shaw    watmath!watmum!cdshaw  or  cdshaw at watmath
University of Waterloo
Revolution is the opiate of the intellectuals.



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