Unix Quote (was: Re: building a PDP11 from the things you

From: Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner <spc_at_conman.org>
Date: Fri Aug 10 00:16:39 2001

It was thus said that the Great Dave McGuire once stated:
>
> On August 9, Carlos Murillo wrote:
> > >DCL is a very complete command language. There's a lot that can be
> > >done directly that require external programs in Unix shells.
> ...
> > By the way, I think that requiring external programs in Unix isn't
> > necessarily a disadvantage, as long as such programs are standard in
> > every U'x. And many are, thanks to POSIX.
>
> You're not familiar with the overhead associated with fork()/vfork(),
> are you Carlos.

  Depends upon the Unix system. Under Linux, fork() is actually a front end
to clone(), which is used to make both threads or processes (and even stuff
in between)---it really depends upon what is copied and what is shared
between the parent and child.

  Thread support under Unix (pick your system) is dreadful (and no, pthreads
isn't a solution (icky icky p-tang!)). Then again, if it wasn't in Unix V6,
then it's not supported well at all!

  -spc (And can you explain the insanely different command line parameters
        to ls (typical Unix command line), find and dd? All three, I think
        are POSIX to some degree 8-)
Received on Fri Aug 10 2001 - 00:16:39 BST