Fwd: uname problem on Mac OS X

[TjL]

I sent a message to the bug-coreutils at gnu.org about the problem I had  
getting uname -p to work.  Here's the reply I received (FWIW)


Begin forwarded message:

> Date: July 19, 2007 9:46:32 PM EDT
> Subject: Re: uname problem on Mac OS X
>
> TjL wrote:
>>  uname -p: i386
>> guname -p: unknown
>
> The GNU uname program simply reports the result from the kernel system
> call uname(2).
>
>   man 2 uname
>
> If the kernel does not report the processor type then GNU uname does
> not have any information to work with.  Some vendors compile programs
> specifically for a single architecture and hard code in a value but
> this is not portable.  The 'uname -p' option is not one of the
> standard options and I recommend that use of it is avoided.
>
>   http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/uname.html
>
> Actually use of uname for any purpose other than returning the system
> name is quite troublesome for portability.  I would avoid it in all
> cases other than when you know that it is going to return meaningful
> data.