17 Jan
2004
17 Jan
'04
6:20 a.m.
On Sat, Jan 17, 2004 at 01:32:42 +0100, Fons Adriaensen wrote:
I dont think thats true, if you compare UNIX system calls to thier windows
counterparts I think you'l see that they are actually very simple - often
encapsulating complex behaviour in a simple API. Or, reflecting most of
the system aspects into a single filesystem: that looses a small ammount of
capability (well, makes it harder to do certain things), but the resulting
system is massivly more simple for it, in the general case.
Another example is fork() which has exactly the bare minimum of features,
compared to clone(), which is rarely used (though neccesary in some cases)
and exposes all the tiny details. I would be very unhappy if I had to use
clone() everytime I wanted to fork a process.
Is UNIX a
dumbed down operating system?
Certainly not, and it provides a good example of what I mean. Unix system
calls are always designed to be as general as possible, even if this means
that that they are more difficult to use than what would be required in 99%
of all cases. Very often you must supply parameters that are not relevant indicating that you want a sensible default. The
consequence is that you are
rarely limited by the UNIX system API - it will normally handle everything
you can imagine. It's this elegant generality that I'm missing a bit in the
way LADSPA is defined.
I think it is present FWIW.
- Steve