malczews%aludra.usc.edu@usc.edu (Frank Malczewski) (11/22/89)
I was wondering whether there might be differences between the run-time librares distributed with the Sun-3 and Sun-4 workstations (e.g., different parameter requirements, different numbers of parameters, etc). Similarly, might there be any other differences of which one need be aware? (I'm pretty new to the unix realm, so any help/pointers would be appreciated.) -- Frank Malczewski (malczews@girtab.usc.edu)
poffen@sj.ate.slb.com (Russ Poffenberger) (12/04/89)
In article <3328@brazos.Rice.edu> malczews@aludra.usc.edu writes: >X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 8, Issue 208, message 15 of 19 > >I was wondering whether there might be differences between the run-time >librares distributed with the Sun-3 and Sun-4 workstations (e.g., >different parameter requirements, different numbers of parameters, etc). > >Similarly, might there be any other differences of which one need be aware? > >(I'm pretty new to the unix realm, so any help/pointers would be appreciated.) Besides the obvious distinction that the two libraries are different binary code, the two differences I am aware of are alloca() and varargs. If you use alloca(), then on a Sun-4, you MUST #include <alloca.h>. This is because alloca() does not exist in the library on a Sun-4, it is kind of a wierd built-in thing. Of course, for good protability, you should include alloca.h regardless of architecture (there is a #ifdef sparc in the module so it is a do-nothing on Sun-3). The other thing to watch out for is the use of varargs. YOU MUST use varargs.h and do everything as exactly described in varargs.h. Again this is a built-in type of thing on a Sun-4 and it is critical that you do thing correctly or it WILL crash. Russ Poffenberger DOMAIN: poffen@sj.ate.slb.com Schlumberger Technologies UUCP: {uunet,decwrl,amdahl}!sjsca4!poffen 1601 Technology Drive CIS: 72401,276 San Jose, Ca. 95110 (408)437-5254