Perl::OSType(3)

NAME
Perl::OSType - Map Perl operating system names to generic types

VERSION
version 1.002

SYNOPSIS
  use Perl::OSType ':all';

  $current_type = os_type();
  $other_type = os_type('dragonfly'); # gives 'Unix'

DESCRIPTION
Modules that provide OS-specific behaviors often need to know if the current operating system matches a more generic type of operating systems. For example, 'linux' is a type of 'Unix' operating system and so is 'freebsd'.

This module provides a mapping between an operating system name as given by $^O and a more generic type. The initial version is based on the OS type mappings provided in Module::Build and ExtUtils::CBuilder. (Thus, Microsoft operating systems are given the type 'Windows' rather than 'Win32'.)

USAGE
No functions are exported by default. The export tag ":all" will export all functions listed below.

  os_type()
  $os_type = os_type();
  $os_type = os_type('MSWin32');

Returns a single, generic OS type for a given operating system name. With no arguments, returns the OS type for the current value of $^O. If the operating system is not recognized, the function will return the empty string.

  is_os_type()
  $is_windows = is_os_type('Windows');
  $is_unix    = is_os_type('Unix', 'dragonfly');

Given an OS type and OS name, returns true or false if the OS name is of the given type. As with "os_type", it will use the current operating system as a default if no OS name is provided.

SEE ALSO

•   Devel::CheckOS

AUTHOR
David Golden <dagolden@cpan.org>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
This software is copyright (c) 2010 by David Golden.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.