platform(n) Tcl Bundled Packages platform(n)______________________________________________________________________________NAMEplatform - System identification support code and utilities
SYNOPSIS
package require platform ?1.0.4?
platform::generic
platform::identify
platform::patterns identifier
_________________________________________________________________DESCRIPTION
The platform package provides several utility commands useful for the
identification of the architecture of a machine running Tcl.
Whilst Tcl provides the tcl_platform array for identifying the current
architecture (in particular, the platform and machine elements) this is
not always sufficient. This is because (on Unix machines) tcl_platform
reflects the values returned by the uname command and these are not
standardized across platforms and architectures. In addition, on at
least one platform (AIX) the tcl_platform(machine) contains the CPU
serial number.
Consequently, individual applications need to manipulate the values in
tcl_platform (along with the output of system specific utilities) -
which is both inconvenient for developers, and introduces the potential
for inconsistencies in identifying architectures and in naming conven‐
tions.
The platform package prevents such fragmentation - i.e., it establishes
a standard naming convention for architectures running Tcl and makes it
more convenient for developers to identify the current architecture a
Tcl program is running on.
COMMANDS
platform::identify
This command returns an identifier describing the platform the
Tcl core is running on. The returned identifier has the general
format OS-CPU. The OS part of the identifier may contain details
like kernel version, libc version, etc., and this information
may contain dashes as well. The CPU part will not contain
dashes, making the preceding dash the last dash in the result.
platform::generic
This command returns a simplified identifier describing the
platform the Tcl core is running on. In contrast to plat‐
form::identify it leaves out details like kernel version, libc
version, etc. The returned identifier has the general format OS-
CPU.
platform::patterns identifier
This command takes an identifier as returned by platform::iden‐
tify and returns a list of identifiers describing compatible
architectures.
KEYWORDS
operating system, cpu architecture, platform, architecture
platform 1.0.4 platform(n)