From: Dalibor Sramek <dali@...>
Date: 2002-11-06T19:58:58+09:00
Subject: Re: Win32 support issues

On Wed, Nov 06, 2002 at 02:22:45AM +0900, Lyle Johnson wrote:

> It has always been a little curious to me that people consider the lack 
> of fork() -- a Unix-specific system call -- to be a "bug" in the Win32 
> version of Ruby. I wonder if those people consider the fact that Ruby's 
> Win32API module doesn't work under Linux a bug?

I think it is about portability. If you use a specific Windows API you are
not likely to run your programm on UNIX. On the other hand the concept of
fork is common in many operating systems.

As for me I have problems with nonblocking I/O in Win32. Consider this:

r, w = IO.pipe
select([r], nil, nil, 1)  # -> nil in UNIX, [r] in Windows

The result is different in UNIX and Windows (although select works fine in
other cases in Windows).

Dalibor Sramek

-- 
Dalibor Sramek            "In the eyes of cats, all things belong to cats."
dali@insula.cz