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)
