Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 21st Oct 2011 23:17 UTC, submitted by jello
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Member since:
2007-02-17
On Linux, the command-line userland programs named cat ln and dd are not UNIX cat, ln and dd. They are written-from-scratch GNU programs with the same names and roughly the same functionality as old UNIX programs.
After all, Gnu is Not UNIX.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU
"GNU is a recursive acronym for "GNU's Not Unix!", chosen because GNU's design is Unix-like, but differs from Unix by being free software and containing no Unix code."
Specifically these programs and others of a similar nature are part of GNU coreutils.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Core_Utilities
The names were kept the same as old UNIX names in order that bash scripts etc would still run as written, and in order that people didn't have to remember new commands.
Nevertheless, cat, ln and dd on Linux were written-from-scratch GNU programs and they are NOT the same programs as cat, ln and dd on UNIX.
Linux and GNU were designed to be kind-of POSIX compliant, but they are not certified to be. It costs money to get POSIX certification, and no-one has paid such a fee for Linux.
Linux is Linux. It is not UNIX (but it is UNIX-like), and it is not POSIX (but it was designed with POSIX guidelines in mind).
In this day and age, Linux is far more important (in practice) than UNIX.
Edited 2011-10-25 22:11 UTC