POSIX

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POSIX is a collection of standards for Unix-like operating systems, defining "a standard operating system interface and environment, including a command interpreter (or 'shell'), and common utility programs to support applications portability at the source code level.".

More formally, it currently refers to The Open Group Technical Standard Base Specifications, Issue 8, 2024 Edition (technically identical to IEEE Std 1003.1, 2024 Edition), also known as POSIX.1-2024. The previous version was POSIX.1-2017, consisting of POSIX.1-2008 plus Technical Corrigenda 1 and 2. An unofficial blog post describing a number of the changes to be found in POSIX.1-2024 is available here.

Man pages documenting functions and utilities specified by POSIX are provided in the sys-apps/man-pages-posix package, and have their relevant section numbers suffixed with a p. For example, cat(1) refers to the man page for the version of cat provided by GNU Coreutils (sys-apps/coreutils), but cat(1p) refers to the man page for cat as defined by POSIX.

Base Specifications

An online frame-based interface to the Base Specifications is available, but each volume can also be accessed directly:

• Volume 1: Base Definitions
• Volume 2: System Interfaces
• Volume 3: Shell and Utilities
• Volume 4: Rationale

Previous editions

Previous editions of the Base Specifications:

• 2018
• 2016
• 2013
• 2008

External resources

• "POSIX 2024 Changes", on the Sortix blog