Inappropriate topics. (?)

[Peter da Silva]

In article <16922 at rpp386.Dallas.TX.US>, jfh at rpp386.Dallas.TX.US (John F. Haugh II) writes:
> In article <5795 at ficc.uu.net> peter at ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
> >Most of the uses of fork() can be satisfied by the following function:

> Well, every program which can be written using spawn() can also be
> written using fork() and exec().

But not every programming environment can support fork/exec. Most can
support spawn().

> Any just about any system worth writing an operating system for of the
> scope of POSIX is going to have the hardware to do memory management.

Who's talking about operating systems, hey? This is comp.std.c, a group
for the discussion of C language standards. I'm trying to point out a
gap in the set of current C language standards... a portable O/S
interface standard. Something between X3J11 and POSIX.

> Any system without MMU hardware probably lacks sufficient address space
> or commercial interest to be worth spending hundreds of millions of
> dollars developing software for.

What, you mean like the IBM-PC?

> And THAT is the real reason.  What
> good is an operating system for machines that don't generate gobs of
> revenue, or that no one wants to buy because they are overly restrictive?

Most people writing C programs today are working in an environment that
will never support POSIX. They are busily writing many very good programs
that will never be easily ported to POSIX environments because there is
no standard for the sorts of things they want to do. I'm trying to suggest
ways to fill in the gaps. Standardising the syntax and semantics of spawn()
(under whatever name) is one thing that will help.
-- 
Peter da Silva, *NIX support guy @ Ferranti International Controls Corporation.
Biz: peter at ficc.uu.net, +1 713 274 5180. Fun: peter at sugar.hackercorp.com. `-_-'
"The security biz is subtle, you have to pick your trade-offs carefully."   U
	-- Barry Shein