What is POSIX?

Hey guys,
Doing a course at the moment and learning about UNIX/LINUX and it refers to POSIX but doesn' elaborate.
Correct me if I am wrong - but is it portable software coding for UNIX/LINUX systems? Do any Windows OS's incorporate it?

Can someone give a n00bie a detailed but understandable explanation of what it is?

Thanks dudes

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>> Re: What is POSIX?

http://kb.iu.edu/data/agjv.html

Short for "Portable Operating System Interface for uniX", POSIX is a set of standards codified by the IEEE and issued by ANSI and ISO. The goal of POSIX is to ease the task of cross-platform software development by establishing a set of guidelines for operating system vendors to follow. Ideally, a developer should have to write a program only once to run on all POSIX-compliant systems. Most modern commercial Unix implementations and many free ones are POSIX compliant. There are actually several different POSIX releases, but the most important are POSIX.1 and POSIX.2, which define system calls and command-line interface, respectively.

The POSIX specifications describe an operating system that is similar to, but not necessarily the same as, Unix. Though POSIX is heavily based on the BSD and System V releases, non-Unix systems such as Microsoft's Windows NT and IBM's OpenEdition MVS are POSIX compliant.

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>> Re: What is POSIX?

Windows usually needs a little something something to get POSIX to work though (Unix compatibility add on).

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>> Re: What is POSIX?

As an old fart, I seem to recall that one of the big things that POSIX brings to the table was originally ANSII-8bit vs. ANSII-7bit support.
This is to say that upper and lower case characters were supported directly on the OS level.
I'm not saying that this is true or if this is the only gain of POSIX, but thats what I remember it giving back in the 80s.

Gerritt

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>> Re: What is POSIX?

So 8 character file names where accepted?
How old is POSIX? Because Windows 95 only supported 8 characters didnt it?

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>> Re: What is POSIX?

POSIX was standardized in '88.

Windows 95 (and DOS of the same era) uses long filenames (255 char). DOS initially used used short filenames (8.3) standard as did Windows 3.1 and down.

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>> Re: What is POSIX?

Ah thats right, 255.

Windows 3.1 technically isnt an OS right? It was referred to as DOS GUI....because it wasnt multi tasking and multi threading?

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>> Re: What is POSIX?

DOS is as much of an OS as Windows is. They interpret human language into machine code.

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>> Re: What is POSIX?

An Operating system is still an operating system, no matter how basic.

Mobile phones all have OS's, the built in 'blue screen' command line on a Commodore 64 is an OS.

The complexity doesnt define it as an OS or not.

As Ford stated, an OS provides the means to access the low level functions of a PC's components and storage devices in an easy to use manner.

i.e. a System to Operate the machine with.

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>> Re: What is POSIX?

They say WIndows 3.1 was just a GUI for DOS.
One of the quick revision questions it has is: "Out of the following, please choose the one that is NOT considered an Operating System"

Windows NT'
Windows Vista
DOS
Windows 3.1
Windows XP

Windows 3.1 is the correct answer.

I dunno, because I thought it was an OS as well. It takes your instructions, such as changing the mouse settings, the keyboard settings.
They must be high.

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>> Re: What is POSIX?

Windows 1.x, Windows 2.x, Windows 3.x, and Windows 4.x (Windows 9x) were all essentially DOS with a shell on top that provided additionally functionality and a GUI. The whole package is still the OS, Windows.

So, all of them are operating systems. Saying Windows 3.1 wasn't an OS is also saying Windows 2 and Windows 1 were also not OS's. Whoever said that doesn't have a clue as Windows 3.1 is more of an "operating system than Windows 1 which was a DOS GUI. Nevertheless, it was still an operating system albeit an expansion upon an older system.

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Uninstallers are a lot like garbage cans without garbage bags; the majority of the garbage is removed but the stench still remains.

>> Re: What is POSIX?

lol

Thats ridiculous!! DOS is an OS, of course Win 3.1 is!! Sure, its built on top of DOS, but provides a GUI and a lot of functionality.

Saying that, you may as well say Win '95 & 98 aren't OS's either!

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>> Re: What is POSIX?

Hahaha thats what i thought, I'll talk to my tutor on Monday and argue it

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>> Re: What is POSIX?

Windows 3.x and WFW (Windows for Workgroups) were OS extensions, but required the underlying OS to be installed first. In those days I actually prefered DRDOS over MSDOS, and Windows ran fine on DRDOS.
Gerritt

Ad Astra Per Aspera
(A rough road leads to the Stars)
We all know what we know, and everyone else knows we are wrong.
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