/ 
OSType-0.001
/ OSType

NAME

OSType - Map operating system names to generic types or families

SYNOPSIS

use OSType ':all';

$current_type = os_type();
$other_type = os_type('dragonfly'); # gives 'Unix'

$is_sun = is_os_family("Sun");

DESCRIPTION

Modules that provide OS-specific behaviors often need to know if the current operating system matches a more generic type or family of operating systems. For example, 'linux' is a type of 'Unix' operating system and so is 'freebsd'.

This module provides a mapping between an operating system name as given by $^O and a more generic type. The initial version is based on the OS type mappings provided in Module::Build and ExtUtils::CBuilder. (Thus, Microsoft operating systems are given the type 'Windows' rather than 'Win32'.)

OS Families

Devel::CheckOS introduced the notion of OS families, which do not necessarily correspond to types. An operating system can belong to multiple families. Supported families include the following (descriptions are taken nearly verbatim from Devel::CheckOS):

  • Unix

    Broadly speaking, these are platforms where:

    • Devices are represented as pseudo-files in the filesystem

    • Symlinks and hardlinks are supported in at least some filesystems

    • "Unix-style" permissions are supported; That is, there are seperate read/write/execute permissions for file owner, group and anyone. This implies the presence of multiple user accounts and user groups. Permissions may not be supported on all filesystems.

    • The filesystem has a single root

    • The C API for the operating system is largely POSIX-compatible

  • Apple, DEC, Sun

    These include any OS written by, respectively, Apple, DEC, and Sun. They exist because, while, eg, Mac OS Classic and Mac OS X are very different platforms, they do support some unique features - such as AppleScript. Vendor families may also have similar known issues or incompatibilities, such as with Sun's 'tar' program.

  • MicrosoftWindows

    This includes any version of Windows and also includes things like Cygwin which run on top of it.

  • Realtime

    This is for all real-time OSes. So far, it only includes QNX.

USAGE

No functions are exported by default. The export tag ":all" will export all functions listed below.

os_type()

$os_type = ostype();
$os_type = ostype('MSWin32');

Returns a single, generic OS type for a given operating system name. With no arguments, returns the OS type for the current value of $^O. If the operating system is not recognized, the function will return the empty string.

is_os_type()

$is_windows = is_os_type('Windows');
$is_unix    = is_os_type('Unix', 'dragonfly');

Given an OS type and OS name, returns true or false if the OS name is of the given type. As with os_type, it will use the current operating system as a default if no OS name is provided.

os_family()

@names = os_family('Apple');

Given an OS family, returns a list of OS names (as they would appear in $^O) that belong to the given family. If the family name is not known, the function will return an empty list.

is_os_family()

$is_realtime  = is_os_family('Realtime');
$is_sun       = is_os_family('Sun', 'solaris');

Given an OS family and an OS name, returns true or false if the OS name is in the given family. As with os_type, it will use the current operating system as a default if no OS name is provided.

SEE ALSO

AUTHOR

David Golden, <dagolden@cpan.org>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Copyright (C) 2009 by David Golden

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself, either Perl version 5.10.0 or, at your option, any later version of Perl 5 you may have available.