part of the original file [ uname.c ]

/* uname -- print system information

   Copyright (C) 1989, 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 1999-2005,
   2007-2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

   This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
   it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
   the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
   (at your option) any later version.

   This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
   but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
   MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
   GNU General Public License for more details.

   You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
   along with this program.  If not, see .  */

/* Written by David MacKenzie  */

    /* This kludge works around a bug in Mac OS X.  */
          if (element == unknown)
            {
              cpu_type_t cputype;
              size_t s = sizeof cputype;
              NXArchInfo const *ai;
              if (sysctlbyname ("hw.cputype", &cputype, &s, NULL, 0) == 0
                  && (ai = NXGetArchInfoFromCpuType (cputype,
                                                     CPU_SUBTYPE_MULTIPLE))
                  != NULL)
                element = ai->name;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kludge