* On 2002.04.02, in <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, * "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Tue, Apr 02, 2002 at 11:27:31PM -0500, Mark J. Reed wrote: > > /usr/xpg4/bin/id -u > To expand upon this: > > When SunOS becamse Solaris, its base moved from BSD (Berkeley's > UNIX-based OS) to System V (official UNIX from AT&T). > For compatibility with System V applications (and with the POSIX standard), > they had to give all of the standard commands in /bin (or /usr/bin) > the System V semantics. > > However, the older behavior was in many cases superior, and those commands > have been retained in /usr/xpg4. I tend to prefer the XPG version of > most commands, so I have /usr/xpg4 before /usr/bin in my PATH.
Close -- the BSD commands were retained[1] in /usr/ucb. /usr/xpg4 contains editions which are compliant with the X/Open Portability Guide, version 4. In general, I find that where XPG4 favors one predecessor over the other, it's SVR4. XPG4 was created by X/Open[2] as a multi-vendor effort to standardize various implementations of UNIX, both SVR4- and BSD-based. But as all the major commercial participants at the time were already focused on or were shifting toward SVR3 or SVR4, that's where the focus of XPG lay, too. Sun was actually central to all this: it was their collaboration with UNIX System Laboratories that created SVR4.0, and their technical and business interest in their BSD roots that assured the integration of BSD components into System V. I believe that Sun is the only vendor with full source-code rights to SVR4 besides SCO, who still owned UNIX last time I checked. There are other licensees, but Sun has a lifetime membership, so to speak, and can legally redistribute SVR4.0 source code. All IIRC, of course. I try to follow the sordid history, but I'm not sure that I really rate even as high as amateur. Sven, I deleted your Cc: for you. -- [1] for compatibility purposes, though, not because of some perceived superiority. Solaris has tried to provide run-time and compile-time compatibility to SunOS 4.1[.4], and providing a /usr/ucb version of common shell tools is integral to that effort. [2] now The Open Group, who owned UNIX(tm) for a while. -- -D. [EMAIL PROTECTED] NSIT University of Chicago
