> > I think an implicit assumption is that the platform has pthreads - I
> > sincerely hope you aren't suggesting that perl does it's own threads
> > implementation.
>
> Having pthreads != being threadsafe at the C level. There are many
> other factors.
Your point being?....
> True. It's not that i don't understand backwards compatibility. It's
> just that I'm spoiled by my Open Source software. I can see how this
> would be more difficult at Sun or HP than at RedHat, where the whole
> OS and all the tools on it ship freshly compiled and with source. In
> a completely Open Source world, we wouldn't have to worry, as (almost)
> everything would be rebuilt around the new version of the library
> anyway. As things are, though, it is not an ideal situation to update
> to newer libraries.
I'm sorry, but you obviously don't understand backwards compatibility and
why it is important.
> Granted, memoizing functions and iterators in libraries could
> be important exceptions for some people, but how common is it to
> find this sort of functionality in a binary library?
How do you know how common it is if you only have the binary?
Alan Burlison
