*nix

[chrisb_ebc]

I have been looking for some PHP scripts...and well this question probably has the potential of being a really dumb one. I noticed on some of the scripts that it requires *nix. Are they refering to Linux? or something else? Just curious if anyone knew? Thanks.

[David Gillaspey]

Hi Chris,

".nix" is new to me, though I don't pretend to know everything there is to know about PHP. I did check my PHP4 book (yes, an older version of PHP) and ".nix" is not found in the index.

Would it be possible for you to provide some context by supplying a URL to a script you found on the internet?

However, the title of this article,

http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=424451&rl=1

suggests that the reference is to UNIX. If so, apparently it is meant to disparage this (older) operating system (nix = "get rid of").

Sincerely,

David Gillaspey
President
Great Church Websites

[flutem3]

Hi Chris,

".nix" is new to me, though I don't pretend to know everything there is to know about PHP. I did check my PHP4 book (yes, an older version of PHP) and ".nix" is not found in the index.

Would it be possible for you to provide some context by supplying a URL to a script you found on the internet?

However, the title of this article,

http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=424451&rl=1

suggests that the reference is to UNIX. If so, apparently it is meant to disparage this (older) operating system (nix = "get rid of").

Sincerely,

David Gillaspey
President
Great Church Websites

WHAT? :)

I have a question unrelated to this one. Our church secretary types our church calendar every month. This means, of course, that she has to retype the recurring events every month which must be a real pain. Yes, she uses a computer.

I am trying to find where a person (Debbie, church secretary) can make just a straight-forward utilitarian monthly calendar and print it out for our print newsletter. I am not talking about a calendar to go on a website. I just found one of those which will be up at the beginning of this coming week.

Thanks in advance to you wizards out there. By the way, Debbie has Microsoft Publisher, Word, and Word Perfect on her computer...and other stuff that I am certain I don't know.

But there has to be an easy way for her to make that monthly calendar!! At least it seems to me that it should. She puts it on a legal sized piece of paper if that makes a difference. Actually, I think it is 8 1/2" x 14."

She did not ask me to check this out. I found out about her situation when I was talking with her about our new website calendar. I am trying to do a "random act of kindness." :) I thought I could easily find the answer, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Hopefully, somebody here can help. Thanks again.

Carol

[chrisb_ebc]

Thanks David,
Here is one website that I found with reference to it. http://www.jabezhosting.com/scripts/ under the JzTeam under requirements to run the script it shows it there. Thanks again for responding.

[David Gillaspey]

Hi Chris,

The context helped, as I thought it would.

Consider the asterisk as a wild card character. Like when you're searching for any .pdf file on a PC, you'd seach for "*.pdf". The asterisk means, find me ANY document with a extension of ".pdf". Although NIX is not meant to be an extension in this case.

I think that all the webmaster is trying to communicate (badly, in my opinion) is that the script only runs on a web server running UNIX, LINUX, etc. ? that is, it won't run on a Windows-based server.

Sincerely,

David Gillaspey
President
Great Church Websites

[chrisb_ebc]

Thanks David.
Yeah that was what I was thinking. It was some weird usage and was not sure if it was a extention of or to PHP. I tried googling it and it really did not come back with much results. But what I did find suggested possibly a tie to Linux, which makes sense. Yes I am farmiliar with the * wildcard atribute when searching. I sorta did not take it as that since there was no . between the *&nix. Thanks for your help.

[iamcam]

I've seen those script portal sites before (hotscripts.com being one of them) where the authors claim you need linux/unix in order to run their script. It's probably done that way out of ignorance.

Most PHP scripts will work fine on any platform running PHP becuase PHP is the same across the board. Besides a small number of functions that probably only run on *nix systems, a script should work just fine out of the box on any plat form. Most likely the script you're looking at won't use those functions, as they're often used to interact with the OS and/or file system. For example, you couldn't run an exec('/bin/sh shellscript.sh') in windows; that's a strictly linux/unix/mac command. But I digress. Those sorts of things aren't often used, so I wouldn't worry about it.

I'd say give it a shot and see if it works.

Cameron

[chrisb_ebc]

Thanks Cameron,

I actually purchase the script and needed to heavily modify it to my needs. My hosting service is running linux anyway. I just wasnt sure if it was some weird new web application/plug-in or something. And the script works just fine. Thanks.

-Chris

[ckvkkeek]

As clearly stated the *nix was just an easy way to refer to any Unix/Linux/etc... server. There are so many flavors of it, that it would be impossible to list them all.

However, one poster stated that it would probably work on any server (i.e. Windows)... this is heavily dependant on the code snippet you are getting.

PHP will run on a Windows server if the extension is installed. However PHP is primarily used on non-IIS servers so generally there are *nix only functions in it. When in Windows/IIS it makes total sense to just use ASP/ASP.NET. They were designed for each other.