platform(n)						       Tcl Bundled Packages						       platform(n)

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NAME

       platform - System identification support code and utilities

SYNOPSIS

       package require platform ?1.0.4?

       platform::generic
       platform::identify
       platform::patterns identifier
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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 con-
       ventions.

       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 for-
	      mat OS-CPU. The OS part of the identifier may contain details like kernel version, libc version, etc., and this information may con-
	      tain 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 platform::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::identify and returns a list of identifiers describing compatible architec-
	      tures.

KEYWORDS

       operating system, cpu architecture, platform, architecture

platform							       1.0.4							       platform(n)