[comp.lang.perl] How portable IS perl?

jew@rt.sunquest.com (/87336) (05/07/91)

I am thinking of using perl as our default scripting language, but it
was brought to my attention that an OS upgrade might break perl.  Does
that happen?  Say we go from Ultrix 4.0 to 4.2... or AIX 1.2 to AIX
1.2.1?  Does anyone use it across several operating systems and count
on it to always work?  I think perl is great, but I don't want to
burn any bridges as it were.... :-)

jew@sunquest.com

Confucious say...
God must love the common man: He made so many of them.

brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) (05/09/91)

In article <1991May6.153322.617@arizona.edu> jew@rt.sunquest.com (/87336) writes:
> I am thinking of using perl as our default scripting language, but it
> was brought to my attention that an OS upgrade might break perl.  Does
> that happen?

No. Perl, the program, is extremely portable. Perl, the language, is not
very portable, because Perl, the program, is only running on a fraction
of the hosts that it could be ported to. But I find it difficult to
imagine an OS change so drastic that Larry has to drop support for a
system entirely.

---Dan