Re: hashcash BSD vs GNU getopt bug (Re: documentation bug?)

[email protected] ("Hal Finney") wrote
Sat, 28 Aug 2004 12:06:31 -0700 (PDT):

|  I often struggle with writing cross platform code.  I wonder if anyone
|  has some good references or resources for this.  I want to write command
|  line code, or libraries suitable for linking with GUI front ends, which
|  will compile on Linux, BSD, Windows and Macs.
|  
|  One useful piece of information would be symbols which are predefined
|  by the compiler (or preprocessor), for each architecture, that would
|  allow you to distinguish them reliably.  I don't know a good source
|  for this.  I have found that _WIN32 is good for identifying Windows
|  though.

Why not use Autoconf for testing for a *capability* instead of relying
on knowledge about some feature being present or not on a particular
platform?  This technique has the advantage of being "future safe" --
when platform X implements function Y your package will use it.