Defining Portable (Was: Invalid pointer addresses)

[Henry Spencer]

In article <10595 at ulysses.homer.nj.att.com> jss at hector.UUCP (Jerry Schwarz) writes:
>The above illustrates an unfortunate shift that is occurring in the
>use of the phrase "portable code".  When I use that phrase I mean
>that IN PRACTICE the code can be run on a large variety of systems.
>It is not a binary attribute...
>Doug (and others) appear to be using "portable" to mean that the code
>whose behavior is guaranteed by the ANSI standard...

Yes, we do.  The reason for this is that it's not that hard to do.  A
serious commitment to portability should imply this level of effort;
anything much less is sheer laziness.  It does require a bit of work,
and avoidance of certain items of "VAX chauvinism" like assuming a
big linear address space or 32-bit ints.  Big deal.

We (at least, I think I speak for Doug and others as well as myself)
are willing to use "portable" as a non-boolean attribute, e.g. to talk
about "levels of portability", but when we use it as a boolean, e.g.
"this program is portable", that's what we mean.  This is a reasonable
and proper usage.

(Note that one can run into situations where the characteristics of
the problem make true portability impossible, but that is not the same
thing as falling short because you can't be bothered.)
-- 
NASA is into artificial        |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
stupidity.  - Jerry Pournelle  | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry at zoo.toronto.edu