POSIX-isms (was Re: Latest Flex 2.6 code & doc)

[Hans-Bernhard Broeker]

On Mon, 7 Jul 2003 address@hidden wrote:

> Apparently Windows 2000 now has some kind of fork(), and cygwin has a
> working version.

In don't quite see how that helps somebody using, say MSVC on Windows 9x,
or any compiler on MS-DOS.  Like I said, the core issue is the assumption
of a POSIX compatible platform in general, not Windows in particular.

> Just to clarify, flex itself uses POSIX IPC mechanisms,
> but the _generated_ code does not.

That will not help a lot.  Flex-generated output is typically not included
in source distributions anyway.  Which means that for most users on
POSIX-impaired systems, being unable to run flex will mean they can't
build those packages, either.

If at all possible, it would be preferrable to at least restrict IPC usage
to popen() and friends.  Those are routinely emulatable by synchronous
instead of asynchronous subprocesses, even on single-tasking OSes like
MS-DOS, and there are implementations provided by many such platforms' C
libraries.

-- 
Hans-Bernhard Broeker (address@hidden)
Even if all the snow were burnt, ashes would remain.