; The following three prinmitive routines are either implemented as system
; calls or primitive C calls. When the OS is GNU/Linux or Mac OS X the routines
; are direct system calls resulting in no linker dependencies at the expense
; of being potentially non-portable. When the OS is Windows the routines are
; C calls resulting in high portability at the expense of requiring external
; linker dependencies. For example, in the case of Windows the gcc compiler
; is required (it's not required for GNU/Linux or Mac OS X compiles) to resolve
; these external routines.
 
