Well, that seems like an open door. But I disagree. Part of programming is finding a trade-off between conflicting goals.
Portability is one goal. But readability is another - and not
necessarely a less important goal than portability. For the
majority of the code I write, if there are any portability issues they are whether they will work with a different version of the kernel, or different versions of other used tools.
The loss in readability between:
$file = "fnord/glop/bibba";
and
$file = File::Spec -> catfile (qw /fnord glop bibba/);
is significant. Enough for me to offset the loss of portability
to, say, MacOS. Note that according to
perlport,
fnord/glop/bibba works, or can be made to work, under Unix, Windows, DOS, OS/2, VMS, VOS and RiscOS.
The XP folks wisely warn against designing in extra functionality "just in case"
Writing from the middle of an XP-to-Linux port
I know couple of meanings of XP: 1) a range of disk servers sold by HP, 2) a version of an OS made in the Pacific Northwest, 3) extreme programming. I'm pretty sure you aren't using "XP" in meaning 1). But I can't figure out whether you mean meaning 2) or meaning 3).
Abigail
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