From help-request at octave dot org Mon Dec 26 21:17:42 2005
Subject: Re: [OctDev] isunix() returns 1 under cygwin
From: Andy Adler <adler at ncf dot ca>
To: etienne at cs dot uky dot edu
Cc: Octave Forge <octave-dev at lists dot sourceforge dot net>,         Octave Help <help@octave.org>
Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2005 16:17:50 -0600

On 12/26/05, Etienne Grossmann <etienne at cs dot uky dot edu> wrote:
> octave:8> help isunix
> isunix is the user-defined function from the file
> /homeætienne/progøctaveøctave-forgeøctave-forge/main/general/isunix.m
>
> Always returns true.  If you are on a windows machine, be sure to
> put an isunix.m which always returns false in your path.

The semantics of 'isunix' depends on what you mean by UNIX.
Strictly speaking, only certain well defined OSes are UNIX. Linux,
for example, is not.

On the other hand, maybe UNIX means OSes that behave like
UNIX in most ways. cygwin has UNIX process semantics
(ie. fork) and file semantics (symlinks, select on files, etc.)

So, is cygwin UNIX? Clearly, a mingwin octave is not unix.

Maybe isunix should make a specific test.

--
Andy



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