C<-x> (or C<-X>) determine if a file has an executable file type.
(S<RISC OS>)
+=item alarm SECONDS
+
+=item alarm
+
+Not implemented. (Win32)
+
=item binmode FILEHANDLE
Meaningless. (S<Mac OS>, S<RISC OS>)
Implemented via Spawn. (VM/ESA)
+Does not automatically flush output handles on some platforms.
+(SunOS, Solaris, HP-UX)
+
=item fcntl FILEHANDLE,FUNCTION,SCALAR
Not implemented. (Win32, VMS)
=item fork
-Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, AmigaOS, S<RISC OS>, VOS, VM/ESA)
+Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>, AmigaOS, S<RISC OS>, VOS, VM/ESA)
+
+Emulated using multiple interpreters. See L<perlfork>. (Win32)
+
+Does not automatically flush output handles on some platforms.
+(SunOS, Solaris, HP-UX)
=item getlogin
Globbing built-in, but only C<*> and C<?> metacharacters are supported.
(S<Mac OS>)
-Features depend on external perlglob.exe or perlglob.bat. May be
-overridden with something like File::DosGlob, which is recommended.
-(Win32)
-
-Globbing built-in, but only C<*> and C<?> metacharacters are supported.
-Globbing relies on operating system calls, which may return filenames
-in any order. As most filesystems are case-insensitive, even "sorted"
-filenames will not be in case-sensitive order. (S<RISC OS>)
+This operator is implemented via the File::Glob extension on most
+platforms. See L<File::Glob> for portability information.
=item ioctl FILEHANDLE,FUNCTION,SCALAR
Not implemented, hence not useful for taint checking. (S<Mac OS>,
S<RISC OS>)
-C<kill($sig, $pid)> makes the process exit immediately with exit
-status $sig. As in Unix, if $sig is 0 and the specified process exists,
-it returns true without actually terminating it. (Win32)
+C<kill()> doesn't have the semantics of C<raise()>, i.e. it doesn't send
+a signal to the identified process like it does on Unix platforms.
+Instead C<kill($sig, $pid)> terminates the process identified by $pid,
+and makes it exit immediately with exit status $sig. As in Unix, if
+$sig is 0 and the specified process exists, it returns true without
+actually terminating it. (Win32)
=item link OLDFILE,NEWFILE
Not implemented. (VMS, S<RISC OS>)
-Return values may be bogus. (Win32)
+Return values (especially for device and inode) may be bogus. (Win32)
=item msgctl ID,CMD,ARG
open to C<|-> and C<-|> are unsupported. (S<Mac OS>, Win32, S<RISC OS>)
+Opening a process does not automatically flush output handles on some
+platforms. (SunOS, Solaris, HP-UX)
+
=item pipe READHANDLE,WRITEHANDLE
Not implemented. (S<Mac OS>)
Only reliable on sockets. (S<RISC OS>)
+Note that the C<socket FILEHANDLE> form is generally portable.
+
=item semctl ID,SEMNUM,CMD,ARG
=item semget KEY,NSEMS,FLAGS
C<$ENV{PERL5SHELL}>. C<system(1, @args)> spawns an external
process and immediately returns its process designator, without
waiting for it to terminate. Return value may be used subsequently
-in C<wait> or C<waitpid>. (Win32)
+in C<wait> or C<waitpid>. Failure to spawn() a subprocess is indicated
+by setting $? to "255 << 8". C<$?> is set in a way compatible with
+Unix (i.e. the exitstatus of the subprocess is obtained by "$? >> 8",
+as described in the documentation). (Win32)
There is no shell to process metacharacters, and the native standard is
to pass a command line terminated by "\n" "\r" or "\0" to the spawned
first token in its argument string. Handles basic redirection
("<" or ">") on its own behalf. (MiNT)
+Does not automatically flush output handles on some platforms.
+(SunOS, Solaris, HP-UX)
+
=item times
Only the first entry returned is nonzero. (S<Mac OS>)
-"cumulative" times will be bogus. On anything other than Windows NT,
-"system" time will be bogus, and "user" time is actually the time
-returned by the clock() function in the C runtime library. (Win32)
+"cumulative" times will be bogus. On anything other than Windows NT
+or Windows 2000, "system" time will be bogus, and "user" time is
+actually the time returned by the clock() function in the C runtime
+library. (Win32)
Not useful. (S<RISC OS>)
=back
+=head1 Supported Platforms
+
+As of early March 2000 (the Perl release 5.6.0), the following
+platforms are able to build Perl from the standard source code
+distribution available at http://www.perl.com/CPAN/src/index.html
+
+ AIX
+ DOS DJGPP 1)
+ FreeBSD
+ HP-UX
+ IRIX
+ Linux
+ LynxOS
+ MachTen
+ MPE/iX
+ NetBSD
+ OpenBSD
+ OS/2
+ QNX
+ Rhapsody/Darwin 2)
+ Solaris
+ SVR4
+ Tru64 UNIX 3)
+ UNICOS
+ UNICOS/mk
+ Unixware
+ VMS
+ VOS
+ Windows 3.1 1)
+ Windows 95 1) 4)
+ Windows 98 1) 4)
+ Windows NT 1) 4)
+
+ 1) in DOS mode either the DOS or OS/2 ports can be used
+ 2) new in 5.6.0: the BSD/NeXT-based UNIX of Mac OS X
+ 3) formerly known as Digital UNIX and before that DEC OSF/1
+ 4) compilers: Borland, Cygwin, Mingw32 EGCS/GCC, VC++
+
+The following platforms worked for the previous major release
+(5.005_03 being the latest maintenance release of that, as of early
+March 2000), but be did not manage to test these in time for the 5.6.0
+release of Perl. There is a very good chance that these will work
+just fine with 5.6.0.
+
+ A/UX
+ BeOS
+ BSD/OS
+ DG/UX
+ DYNIX/ptx
+ DomainOS
+ Hurd
+ NextSTEP
+ OpenSTEP
+ PowerMAX
+ SCO ODT/OSR
+ SunOS
+ Ultrix
+
+The following platform worked for the previous major release (5.005_03
+being the latest maintenance release of that, as of early March 2000).
+However, standardization on UTF-8 as the internal string representation
+in 5.6.0 has introduced incompatibilities in this EBCDIC platform.
+Support for this platform may be enabled in a future release:
+
+ OS390 1)
+
+ 1) Previously known as MVS, or OpenEdition MVS.
+
+Strongly related to the OS390 platform by also being EBCDIC-based
+mainframe platforms are the following platforms:
+
+ BS2000
+ VM/ESA
+
+These are also not expected to work under 5.6.0 for the same reasons
+as OS390. Contact the mailing list perl-mvs@perl.org for more details.
+
+MacOS (Classic, pre-X) is almost 5.6.0-ready; building from the source
+does work with 5.6.0, but additional MacOS specific source code is needed
+for a complete port. Contact the mailing list macperl-porters@macperl.org
+for more information.
+
+The following platforms have been known to build Perl from source in
+the past, but we haven't been able to verify their status for the
+current release, either because the hardware/software platforms are
+rare or because we don't have an active champion on these
+platforms--or both:
+
+ 3b1
+ AmigaOS
+ ConvexOS
+ CX/UX
+ DC/OSx
+ DDE SMES
+ DOS EMX
+ Dynix
+ EP/IX
+ ESIX
+ FPS
+ GENIX
+ Greenhills
+ ISC
+ MachTen 68k
+ MiNT
+ MPC
+ NEWS-OS
+ Opus
+ Plan 9
+ PowerUX
+ RISC/os
+ Stellar
+ SVR2
+ TI1500
+ TitanOS
+ Unisys Dynix
+ Unixware
+
+Support for the following platform is planned for a future Perl release:
+
+ Netware
+
+The following platforms have their own source code distributions and
+binaries available via http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports/index.html:
+
+ Perl release
+
+ AS/400 5.003
+ Netware 5.003_07
+ Tandem Guardian 5.004
+
+The following platforms have only binaries available via
+http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports/index.html:
+
+ Perl release
+
+ Acorn RISCOS 5.005_02
+ AOS 5.002
+ LynxOS 5.004_02
+
+Although we do suggest that you always build your own Perl from
+the source code, both for maximal configurability and for security,
+in case you are in a hurry you can check
+http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports/index.html for binary distributions.
+
=head1 AUTHORS / CONTRIBUTORS
Abigail <abigail@fnx.com>,
projects / p5sagit/p5-mst-13.2.git / blobdiff