From Forum Nokia Wiki

P.I.P.S. (P.I.P.S. Is POSIXon Symbian) supplements the existing set of rich native Symbian C++ APIs available on Symbian smartphones with a more industry-standard POSIX-compliant API layer, making Symbian software development more accessible to developers who program using the C language. The POSIX-compliant APIs are generally simpler and more coarse-grained than the native Symbian C++ APIs and will be more familiar to developers with a background in RTOSes, UNIX or Windows. When deciding whether to use the native Symbian C++ or the P.I.P.S. environment, consider what you wish to achieve. In general, if you require tight or rich integration of your software with the smartphone, then Symbian C++ APIs are most appropriate. However, if portability is more important, you should restrict yourself to POSIX APIs. It is expected that the P.I.P.S. libraries will be included in ROM on certain smartphones based on Symbian OS v9.3 and later.

The first version of P.I.P.S adds the following standard libraries to Symbian Operating System: libc,libm,libpthread,libdl.

Note:

--The P.I.P.S. environment does not support signals.

--The P.I.P.S. environment’s lack of support for signals means that IPC with signals is not supported.

--Under P.I.P.S., I/O must be carried out in a synchronous manner.

Alternatives to fork() and exec() for creating child processes. link

Related:

Open C library

http://newlc.com/PIPS-is-Posix-on-Symbian.html http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/4775_Symbian_introduces_PIPS_is_POS.php http://newlc.com/What-is-new-in-Symbian-OS-9-5.html