Re: how do i find out the platform emacs runs on?

[Ehud Karni]

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On 26 Nov 2003 17:36:02 +0000, Phillip Lord <p.lord@russet.org.uk> wrote:
>
> One important question to ask though, is why are you doing this? In
> general its better to ask Emacs for its capabilities rather than its
> platform.

I have an .emacs files that runs on 3 systems: GNU/Linux, windows-NT
and Cygwin (on windows). I set some Emacs variables and some environment
variables. It has nothing to do with the Emacs capabilities and
everything with the OS capabilities/behavior.
e.g. I set the `desktop-basefilename' differently for windows-NT and
Cygwin because they have different path structure (X:\... vs. /X/...).

> Checking between console and windowing environment seems a good way to
> do things.
>
> This way if Emacs on different systems gains new functionality, it
> should all just work.

Only if it is purely Emacs dependent, When it is dependent on the OS
or the display or any other factor, you should check for the specific
element that differentiate between these situations.

> Of course there are times when you might just not be bothered to do
> this, or when its too much effort (checking whether external programs
> like diff are available for instance).

There are times, you just can not check (e.g. if the test might hang
the system or block Emacs forever).

Ehud.


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