Answer on sockets; Question on screen under SunOS 4.[01]

Doug Gwyn gwyn at smoke.brl.mil
Fri Nov 16 07:57:03 AEST 1990


In article <7122:Nov1408:21:1690 at kramden.acf.nyu.edu> brnstnd at kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:
>You're seeing the evil effects of POSIX sessions, the only innovation in
>P1003.1 not based upon real-world experience and hence (objectively) the
>worst feature of the standard. SunOS 4.1 is a POSIX-based system.

Actually, it was based on real-world experience, although as with many
of the details in such standards the standard specified a slight variant
of what had previously been implemented.  The capsule summary:  BSD job
control is a horrible kludge that never did work right and required
vhangup etc.  HP-UX was based on UNIX System V and when customers wanted
job control some reengineering was necessary in order to make it work in
that environment and also to close several security holes.  POSIX job
control was originally specified along the lines recommended by HP-UX
engineers, but got redesigned during balloting, as did lots of other
stuff.  I think the IEEE balloting procedures suck.



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