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

VERSION
    version 0.005

SYNOPSIS
      use Perl::OSType ':all';

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

      $is_sun = is_os_family("Sun");

DESCRIPTION
    Modules that provide OS-specific behaviors often need to know if the
    current operating system matches a more generic type or family 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'.)

  OS Families
    Devel::CheckOS introduced the notion of OS families, which do not
    necessarily correspond to types. An operating system can belong to
    multiple families. Supported families include the following
    (descriptions are taken nearly verbatim from Devel::CheckOS):

    *   Unix

        Broadly speaking, these are platforms where:

        *   Devices are represented as pseudo-files in the filesystem

        *   Symlinks and hardlinks are supported in at least some
            filesystems

        *   "Unix-style" permissions are supported; That is, there are
            seperate read/write/execute permissions for file owner, group
            and anyone. This implies the presence of multiple user accounts
            and user groups. Permissions may not be supported on all
            filesystems.

        *   The filesystem has a single root

        *   The C API for the operating system is largely POSIX-compatible

    *   Apple, DEC, Sun

        These include any OS written by, respectively, Apple, DEC, and Sun.
        They exist because, while, eg, Mac OS Classic and Mac OS X are very
        different platforms, they do support some unique features - such as
        AppleScript. Vendor families may also have similar known issues or
        incompatibilities, such as with Sun's 'tar' program.

    *   MicrosoftWindows

        This includes any version of Windows and also includes things like
        Cygwin which run on top of it.

    *   Realtime

        This is for all real-time OSes. So far, it only includes QNX.

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

  os_type()
      $os_type = ostype();
      $os_type = ostype('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.

  os_family()
      @names = os_family('Apple');

    Given an OS family, returns a list of OS names (as they would appear in
    $^O) that belong to the given family. If the family name is not known,
    the function will return an empty list.

  is_os_family()
      $is_realtime  = is_os_family('Realtime');
      $is_sun       = is_os_family('Sun', 'solaris');

    Given an OS family and an OS name, returns true or false if the OS name
    is in the given family. 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.

