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

[Bill Gunshannon]

On 08/07/2018 03:38 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> On 2018-08-07 13:13, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>> On 08/06/2018 02:23 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>>> On 2018-08-06 17:21, 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"?
>>>>
>>>>     Years ago, I found I had to get into ioctl() just to identify 
>>>> the contents
>>>>     of a magtape.
>>>
>>> You needs ioctl() for two specific things when dealing with magtapes.
>>> 1) When moving over the tape, either rewinding, skipping files or 
>>> records forward or backward.
>>> 2) When you want to write tape marks.
>>>
>>> There are no other situation when you use ioctl() for the tape. If 
>>> you want to figure out what is on the tape, you read() from it.
>>>
>>> But I agree that just using the C library when dealing with tapes 
>>> will make you so utterly miserable that you want to shoot yourself in 
>>> the head.
>>>
>>> The C library is good when you want to do basic, simple things. Tapes 
>>> are not among the basic, simple things under Unix.
>>>
>>
>> Not just tapes.  Terminals, networks, screen handling.  There hasn't
>> been a time when Unix was just Unix since Version 7 went away.
> 
> Sure. ioctl() is not only for tapes. It's a jack of all trades for all 
> devices, as soon as you want to do anything beyond reading and writing.
> 
> However, screen handling isn't one of the things. Screen handling is 
> just reads and writes. :-)
> 

I wasn't talking of ioctl().  I was responding to the earlier comment
about "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."  Which, as I said, hasn't been true since most people
stopped using V7.

bill