> perl -e 'print $ENV{'OSTYPE'}," ",$^O,$/'
FreeBSD FreeBSD
>
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> uname
FreeBSD
>
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antirice    
The first rule of Perl club is - use Perl
The ith rule of Perl club is - follow rule i - 1 for i > 1

No, worse. uname is available on pretty much every flavour of Unixoid system under the sun, while the presence of $OSTYPE depends on additional factors.

Makeshifts last the longest.

$OS_TYPE=`uname -s`
$OS_VERSION=`uname -r
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Actually there is at least one special case: AIX. AIX does it its own way: uname -r returns the minor version of the OS, while uname -v returns the major version; this is the output on AIX 4.3:

bash$ uname -s
AIX
bash$ uname -r
3
bash$ uname -v
4
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With your code the system will appear to have AIX 3 intead of 4...

Ciao!
--bronto

---

The very nature of Perl to be like natural language--inconsistant and full of dwim and special cases--makes it impossible to know it all without simply memorizing the documentation (which is not complete or totally correct anyway).
--John M. Dlugosz

Whoa. I have never caught that before, never had to worry about versions on AIX. Thanks, I will change my code accordingly. You Rock!
Josh

I had the same problem and came across a solution that gcc uses. For various reasons this is expressed as a bash script and a more recent version is probably abailable. I leave the conversion to Perl as an exercise for the reader:

    # Short circuit this function if we know which system we are on
    if [ $OS_SYSTEM_REALLY ]; then
        echo "${OS_SYSTEM_REALLY}"
        return
    fi

    # First get the values for this machine

    # Code lifted from config.guess in the gcc software
    OS_UNAME_M=`(uname -m) 2>/dev/null` || OS_UNAME_M=unknown
    OS_UNAME_S=`(uname -s) 2>/dev/null` || OS_UNAME_S=unknown
    OS_UNAME_R=`(uname -r) 2>/dev/null` || OS_UNAME_R=unknown
    OS_UNAME_V=`(uname -v) 2>/dev/null` || OS_UNAME_V=unknown
    OS_UNAME="${OS_UNAME_M}:${OS_UNAME_S}:${OS_UNAME_R}:${OS_UNAME_V}"

    # Note: order is significant - the case branches are not exclusive
+.
    case "${OS_UNAME}" in
        sun4*:SunOS:5.[012345]*:*)
            echo "sol24"
            return ;;
        sun4*:SunOS:5.[6789]*:*)
            echo "sol26"
            return ;;
        sun4*:SunOS:[7891]*:*)
            echo "Unknown Solaris version" >&2
            echo "Try setting \$OS_SYSTEM_REALLY to sol26" >&2
            echo "unknown"
            return ;;
        sun4*:SunOS:*:*)
            echo "sun"
            return ;;
        *:AIX:1:4)
            echo "aix41"
            return ;;
        *:IRIX*:5.*:*)
            echo "sgi"
            return ;;
        *:IRIX*:6.[2345]:*)
            echo "irix62"
            return ;;
        9000/[78]??:HP-UX:*:*)
            echo "hp"
            return ;;
        i[345678]86:Linux:*:*)
            echo "linux"
            return ;;
        sparc:Linux:*:*)
            echo "ulinux"
            return ;;
        *:*:*:*)
            # If we get here then we have something weird
            echo "Unknown system \"${OS_UNAME}\"" >&2
            echo "Try setting \$OS_SYSTEM_REALLY to one of sun, sol, h
+p etc" >&2
            echo "unknown"
            return ;;
    esac
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------
We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age.

Don't go borrowing trouble. For programmers, this means Worry only about what you need to implement.

Please remember that I'm crufty and crochety. All opinions are purely mine and all code is untested, unless otherwise specified.

I thought it was obvious from the question: the OS name, for example... and the OS version

---

The very nature of Perl to be like natural language--inconsistant and full of dwim and special cases--makes it impossible to know it all without simply memorizing the documentation (which is not complete or totally correct anyway).
--John M. Dlugosz