version and debug statements

[Brad Roberts]

On Thu, 11 May 2006, Walter Bright wrote:

> Sean Kelly wrote:
> > For what it's worth, I think it would be useful for the 'Posix' version to
> > be added, so any system supporting POSIX would have version 'Posix'
> > automatically specified in addition to any OS version identifier.  This
> > would be similar to how Windows platforms also have either 'Win32' or
> > 'Win64' defined.  While a good bit of POSIX declarations are indeed
> > implementation dependent, an equally large amount are not, and I believe it
> > would be useful for a version identifier to reflect this.
> 
> Having large parts of Posix be implementation dependent kinda shoots the whole
> idea of a standard in the foot.

I feel the need to cry foul here, a little.  Which parts are 
implementation defined?  How widely used are those parts?  In my 
experience, the vast majority of the parts that are used with any major 
frequency are identical between the various posix compliant operating 
systems.

It's also worth pointing out, though I suspect you're already well aware 
but many others probably aren't, that Posix isn't _a_ standard.  It's a 
collection of layered standards.  Some good reading:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POSIX

    http://www.unix.org/what_is_unix/single_unix_specification.html

Later,
Brad