Re: Detect Windows reliably (was: io.popen binary writecompatibility)

["Victor Bombi" <sonoro@...>]



Best hack for me:

 

-----------------extracted from penligth (Steve Donovan)
local is_windows = package.config:sub(1,1) == '\\'

 

victor

----- Original Message -----

From: Rena

To: Lua mailing list

Sent: Friday, September 26, 2014 9:20 PM

Subject: Re: Detect Windows reliably (was: io.popen binary writecompatibility)

On 2014-09-26 1:38 PM, "Doug Currie" <doug.currie@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> As a quick hack I've done:
>
> local path = os.getenv('PATH')
> if path:find('C:\\Program') then
>     windows = true
> else
>     windows = false
> end
>
> There are surely better strings for discrimination.
>

I'd look for just C:\, or see if it's possible to open C:\boot.ini (but I'm not sure all programs are allowed to open it?)

It's technically possible for there to not be a C:\ (Windows can be installed to any letter), but a lot of programs expect there to be. You could try every letter just to be sure though.

That said, perhaps Lua could define a variable like _OS = "windows" (or "linux", etc). Since the interpreter has to be compiled for each OS anyway, you'd just change the string constant. (for eg an embedded environment it could be nil.) Or this could even be in the os library (os.name?)

Alternatively there are probably other environment variables you can check for the presence/lack of, like $PS1, $HOME, $WINROOT...