Limitations of POSIX Applications on Windows NT |
Q149902
The information in this article applies to:
- Microsoft Win32 Application Programming Interface (API), included with:
- the operating system: Microsoft Windows NT, versions 3.51, 4.0
- the operating system: Microsoft Windows 2000
SUMMARY
This article discusses the limitations of the Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) applications on Windows NT. POSIX is a standard set by ANSI/IEEE to promote source level compatibility that allows applications to run on a wide variety of systems and architectures. The POSIX interface on Windows NT strictly follows the POSIX 1003.1-1990 standards.
MORE INFORMATION
Following are some of the POSIX limitations:
- POSIX applications only launch other POSIX applications. They can not launch DOS, OS/2, Win16 or Win32 applications.
- POSIX applications can not call any Win32 APIs. They do not have any access to DDE, OLE, memory mapped files, named pipes, windows sockets and other Win32 features.
- POSIX applications can not implicitly or explicitly load a Win32 DLL.
- POSIX applications do not have access to any networking APIs such as pipes or sockets. They are not network aware, but they can access files over the network.
- POSIX applications do not have any source level debugger support. You cannot use Windbg or the Microsoft Visual C++ debugger to debug POSIX applications on Windows NT.
For additional information, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
Q99361 Specifying Filenames Under the POSIX Subsystem
REFERENCES
MSDN Development Library, "Understanding Windows NT POSIX Compatibility", by Ray Cort.
Additional query words: 3.50 POSIX
Keywords : kbOSWinNT351 kbOSWinNT400 kbOSWin2000 kbOSWin32s
Issue type :
Technology : kbAudDeveloper kbWin32sSearch kbWin32API
Last Reviewed: October 22, 2000 |
