[Info-vax] The (now lost) future of Alpha.

[Chris]

On 08/06/18 16:21, Bob Koehler wrote:
> In article<pk7pe6$c30$1 at gioia.aioe.org>, Chris<xxx.syseng.yyy at gfsys.co.uk>  writes:
>>
>> One of the reasons why unix and C became so popular in the early days
>> is because the C library provides platform independent access to i/o,
>> storage and a shed load of other functions. If I write a c program for
>> any flavour of unix, or linux and don't try to be too clever, it will
>> almost always compile and run on anything else.
>
>     You obvioulsy haven't done enough with ioctl().  Or am I being "too
>     clever"?

Probably correct, but even for VMS, Vax C, don't remember any serious
problems with the C run time library. Never need things like fork
anyway. But no, don't remember needing ioctl() in everyday work.

>
>     Years ago, I found I had to get into ioctl() just to identify the contents
>     of a magtape.
>

Ok, but that's a pretty special case, though who knows what systems
programmers have to deal with from time to time :-). If you are on a
unix machine, then there are other utils, like dd to investigate low
level disk and tape formats...

Chris