>I'm writing a paper on unix, and for the life of me, I can't find out what
>the heck this POSIX thing is. I know it is some kind of standard, but
>that's about all I can find (It's funny how these pc mags always foam at the
>mouth about it, but never actually say just WHAT it is).
An indepedent effort to define a standard operating system environment was
begun in 1891 by usr/group, an organization made up of UNIX Systems users who
wanted to ensure the portability of applications. They published a standard in
1984. Because of the magnitude of the job, in 1985 the committee working on
standards merged with the Insttute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers
(IEEE), Project(P1003). The goal of P1003 was to establish a set of American
National Standards Institute (ANSI) standards. The standards that the various
working groups in P1003 are establishing are called Portable Operating System
Interface for Computer Environments(POSIX). Posix will be a family of standards
that define the way apllications interact with the operating system. Among theseareas coverd by POSIX are system calls,libraries,tools,interfaces,verification
and testing,real time features and securtiy. The POSIX standard that has
received the most attention is P1003.1, which defines the system interface.
POSIX has been endorsed by the National Institute of Standards and Tech(NIST)
previously known as the National Bureau of Standards (NBS), as part of the
Federal Information-Processing Standard (FIPS). The FIPS must be met by
computers purchased by the Uniyed Federal government.
Plainly an IEEE standard that defines requirments for portable UNIX-like
