POSIX::1003 - POSIX 1003.1 extensions to Perl
POSIX::1003 is extended by POSIX::1003::Confstr POSIX::1003::Events POSIX::1003::FS POSIX::1003::FdIO POSIX::1003::Limit POSIX::1003::Locale POSIX::1003::Math POSIX::1003::OS POSIX::1003::Pathconf POSIX::1003::Proc POSIX::1003::Properties POSIX::1003::Signals POSIX::1003::Sysconf POSIX::1003::Termios POSIX::1003::Time
# use the specific extensions # and see POSIX::Overview and POSIX::3
The POSIX module in core (distributed with Perl itself) is ancient, the documentation is usually wrong, and it has too much unusable code in it. POSIX::1003 tries to provide cleaner access to the operating system. More about the choices made can be found in section "Rationale",
POSIX::1003
The official POSIX standard is large, with over 1200 functions; POSIX::Overview does list them all. This collection of POSIX::1003 extension provides access to quite a number of those functions, when they are not provided by "core". They also define as many system constants as possible. More functions may get added in the future.
Start looking in POSIX::Overview, to discover which module provides certain functionality. You may also guess the location from the module names listed in "DETAILS", below.
All modules provide a :constants and a :functions tag, sometimes more. The default is :all, which means: everthing. You may also specify :none (of course: nothing).
:constants
:functions
:all
:none
When the import list is preceeded by +1, the symbols will get published into the namespace of the caller namespace.
+1
use POSIX::1003::Pathconf; use POSIX::1003::Pathconf ':all'; # same use POSIX::3 ':pc'; # same, for the lazy use POSIX::3 ':pathconf'; # same, less lazy sub MyModule::import(@) # your own tricky exporter { POSIX::1003::Pathconf->import('+1', @_); }
Provide access to the _CS_* constants.
_CS_*
Provides unbuffered IO handling; based on file-descriptors.
Some generic file-system information. See also POSIX::1003::Pathconf for more precise info.
Locales, see also perllocale.
Standard math functions of unknown precission.
A few ways to get Operating system information. See also POSIX::1003::Sysconf, POSIX::1003::Confstr, and POSIX::1003::Properties,
Provide access to the pathconf() and its trillion _PC_* constants.
pathconf()
_PC_*
Provide access to the _POSIX_* constants.
_POSIX_*
With helper modules POSIX::SigSet and POSIX::SigAction.
Provide access to the sysconf and its zillion _SC_* constants.
sysconf
_SC_*
Terminal IO
Time-stamp processing
For getting and setting resource limits.
Flags for modes, seek and fcntl are left to be defined by the Fcntl module.
All constants representing error numbers are left to be defined in the Errno module.
Provides an OO interface around getpw*()
getpw*()
Provides an OO interface around getgr*()
getgr*()
provides access to all (get|set)e?[ug]id functions. Of course, you may use the special variables $( $) $< $> as well, but that gives unpredictable results.
(get|set)e?[ug]id
$( $) $< $>
The POSIX module as distributed with Perl itself is ancient (it dates before Perl5) Although it proclaims that it provides access to all POSIX functions, it only lists about 200 out of 1200. From that subset, half of the functions with croak when you use them, complaining that they cannot get implemented in Perl for some reason.
Many other functions provided by POSIX-in-Core simply forward the caller to a function with the same name which is in basic perl (see perldoc). With a few serious complications: the functions in POSIX do not use prototypes, sometimes expect different arguments and sometimes return different values.
Back to the basics: the POSIX::1003 provides access to the POSIX libraries where they can be made compatible with Perl's way of doing things. For instance, setuid of POSIX is implemented with $), whose exact behavior depends on compile-flags and OS: it's not the pure setuid() of the standard hence left-out. There is no isalpha() either: not compatible with Perl strings and implemented very different interface from POSIX. And there is also no own exit(), because we have a CORE::exit() with the same functionality.
setuid
$)
setuid()
isalpha()
exit()
CORE::exit()
This distribution does not add much functionality itself: it is mainly core's POSIX.xs (which is always available and ported to all platforms). You can access these routines via POSIX as well.
When you are used to POSIX.pm but want to move to POSIX::1003, you must be aware about the following differences:
the constants and functions are spread over many separate modules, based on their purpose, where POSIX uses a header filename as tag to group provided functionality.
functions provided by CORE are usually not exported again by POSIX::1003 (unless to avoid confusion, for instance: is atan2() in core or ::Math?)
atan2()
constants which are already provided via Fcntl or Errno are not provided by this module as well. This should reduce the chance for confusion.
functions which are also in CORE can be imported, but will silently be ignored. In POSIX, functions with the same name get exported without prototype, which does have consequences for interpretation of your program. This module uses prototypes on all exported functions, like CORE does.
POSIX
hundreds of _SC_*, _CS_*, _PC_*, _POSIX_*, UL_*, and RLIMIT_* constants were collected from various sources, not just a minimal subset. You get access to all defined on your system.
UL_*
RLIMIT_*
when an user program addresses a constant which is not defined by the system, POSIX will croak. Modules in POSIX::1003 on the other hand, will return undef.
undef
This simplifies code like this:
use POSIX::1003::FS 'PATH_MAX'; use POSIX::1003::PathConfig '_PC_PATH_MAX'; my $max_fn = _PC_PATH_MAX($fn) // PATH_MAX // 1024;
With the tranditional POSIX, you have to eval() each use of a constant.
eval()
This module is part of POSIX-1003 distribution version 0.09, built on January 04, 2012. Website: http://perl.overmeer.net. The code is based on POSIX, which is released with Perl itself.
Copyrights of the perl code and the related documentation by 2011-2012 by Mark Overmeer. For other contributors see ChangeLog.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. See http://www.perl.com/perl/misc/Artistic.html
To install POSIX::1003, copy and paste the appropriate command in to your terminal.
cpanm
cpanm POSIX::1003
CPAN shell
perl -MCPAN -e shell install POSIX::1003
For more information on module installation, please visit the detailed CPAN module installation guide.