Asri-unix.1170
net.works
utzoo!decvax!cca!sri-unix!REM@MIT-MC
Tue Apr 6 20:54:53 1982
Re: WORKS Digest V2 #37
From: Robert Elton Maas <REM AT MIT-MC>
It shouldn't be too hard to add an extra level of software at the
point where the user program itself interfaces to UNIX. Having done
so, for example having all OPENs of files/pipes go thru a single
user-written procedure, which is moved to a separate source file and
shared among all user programs that are written in the same source
language, it should then be possible to modify the interface source
file to run on a non-unix system, at which point all those user
programs should work without significant modifications on the other
system. Thus systems needn't be standardized to have UNIX as their
user-program/system interface, in order to acquire the UNIX
application-program "library". (Quotes around "library" because I
don't mean library in the usual computer-jargon sense of a "library of
assembly-language subroutines editable by FUDGE2".)
To some extent, SAIL and LISP already do this sort of thing, as does
PCNET software.
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