NAME

       platform - System identification support code and utilities

SYNOPSIS

       package require platform ?1.0.10?

       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 conventions.

       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 format  OS-CPU.  The  OS  part  of  the
              identifier  may  contain  details like kernel version, libc version, etc., and this
              information may contain 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 architectures.

EXAMPLE

       This can be used to allow an application to be shipped with multiple builds  of  a  shared
       library,  so  that  the  same  package  works on many versions of an operating system. For
       example:

              package require platform
              # Assume that app script is .../theapp/bin/theapp.tcl
              set binDir [file dirname [file normalize [info script]]]
              set libDir [file join $binDir .. lib]
              set platLibDir [file join $libDir [platform::identify]]
              load [file join $platLibDir support[info sharedlibextension]]

KEYWORDS

       operating system, cpu architecture, platform, architecture