Joerg Schilling writes:
> John Plocher <John.Plocher at Sun.COM> wrote:
> > The real question is "which standard?"
> >
> >    Ship "Sun's old crufty Sys5 tools" in /usr/bin and you alienate
> >    the GNU-Linux crowd who consider being different from GNU to
> >    be a bug;
> 
> POSIX requires you to call:
> 
> PATH=`getconf PATH`
> sh
> 
> to get a POSIX compliant environment.

I'm picking nits here, but it doesn't actually require you to do that.
It requires us to *provide* that interface and for it to work.  How
you (the programmer) choose to get into the POSIX environment on any
platform (including an OpenSolaris-based distribution) is your choice,
not something POSIX dictates.

In other words, if you plan to make your POSIX-using software work on
SXDE, it's sufficient to read the standards(5) man page, and then set
up the PATH variable as described there.

Note that there's a difference between POSIX.1-2001 and POSIX.2a-1992,
so you also probably have to decide "which POSIX."  If you use just
"/usr/bin/getconf PATH" on OpenSolaris today, you'll get POSIX.2a-1992
(SUSv2), not POSIX.1-2001 (SUSv3).

But, then, that's the great thing about standards.  There are so many
to choose from.

-- 
James Carlson, Solaris Networking              <james.d.carlson at sun.com>
Sun Microsystems / 35 Network Drive        71.232W   Vox +1 781 442 2084
MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757   42.496N   Fax +1 781 442 1677

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