rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) (04/03/91)
davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr) writes: > peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) writes: > | ...Outside of the 80x86 family, all > | my big portability problems are caused by differences in *software* > | architectures or buggy code. > All that bigendian vs. little endian stuff is just a bad dream, right? No, it's not a bad dream, but it doesn't get in your way if you use a little bit of care. It doesn't take much to figure out that if you're going to move data between machines, you either use a portable format or you have to do a quick translation. It's a trivial problem, and you can either dodge it or use the common trivial solution. > You've been around long enough to know better. The cause of > portability problems is code which makes assumptions about the hardware. > Period... Hmph. I've been around a while too, and fighting portability issues for most of that time. I agree wholeheartedly with Peter: The major problems are in the software--generally the software that sits between what you're doing and the hardware. Sure, the hardware differences can create problems if you allow them to do so. There is no problem so simple and obvious that you can't fail to avoid it. (Hmmm...as aphorisms go, that last one's gonna need work.:-) The article "Portability: a problem no longer solved" (approx title) by Feldman and Gentleman, in Computing Systems a couple issues back, has a lot of useful insights. -- Dick Dunn rcd@ico.isc.com -or- ico!rcd Boulder, CO (303)449-2870 The Official Colorado State Vegetable is now the "state legislator".